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| The Antecedent Configuration of Technology Convergence of New Energy Vehicle Enterprises in an Uncertain Environment |
| Chen Zifeng,Wang Yue,Jia Weifeng,Cheng Long |
| (School of Economics and Management, Xi'an University of Posts and Telecommunications, Xi'an 710061, China) |
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Abstract Environmental uncertainty is a double-edged sword with both challenges and opportunities for enterprises. In this setting, it is of great importance to expand their organizational boundaries by technology convergence in order to maintain and improve their competitiveness. As a national strategic emerging industry and pillar industry, the new energy automobile industry has been experiencing rapid development recently. While new star-ups and cross-border incumbent enterprises are flocking to this industry, intense competitive pressures and market uncertainty follow. Meanwhile, the continuous strengthening of R&D investment and the introduction of cross-border technology have raised the overall technical level of the industry year by year with increasing uncertainties. In the uncertain environment, enterprises work with known causal relationships, but it is difficult for them to adjust enterprise strategies timely and effectively without additional information. In response to environmental uncertainty, enterprises need to coordinate the resources and conditions from every aspect, expand the technological boundaries through technological convergence, improve their initiative, flexibility and adaptability,so as to cope with the challenges and seize the opportunities , and then maintain the enterprise competitiveness.
This study aims to discuss the influence factors and improvement paths of technology convergence in uncertain environment based on the TOE framework, configuration theory and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method, with the sample of 21 Chinese new energy vehicle listed companies. The initial data is sourced from the Dewant Patent Database and the Enterprise Annual Report. The results show four different paths for high technology convergence, i.e., an environmental fluctuation-technology driven path, an environmental fluctuation-resource supported path, an environmental balance-organization supported-government driven path and a technological turbulence-organization supported-government driven path. Technology breadth and organizational redundancy present an alternative relationship when both technology and market uncertainty are high, while organizational redundancy and government subsidies show a complementary relationship when both technology and market uncertainty are weak. The technology uncertainty in linkage matching is the core condition of various configurations of ultra-high technology convergence. There are three paths to realize non-high technology convergence, with an asymmetric relationship with that of high technology convergence. According to the results of configuration analysis, when the level of market and technology uncertainty is high,richer technical elements and broader ranges of knowledge for acquisition, absorption and utilization can be achieved based on the wider technology breadth so as to realize enterprise technology convergence. Synchronously, the higher organizational redundancy provides enterprises with various resources to deal with the uncertainties, and helps enterprises establish more extensive ranges of external cooperation relationships to broaden their own technology scope. In this situation, it shows substitution effects between wider technology breadth and higher organizational redundancy. While as long as the market is relatively stable, with or without technological uncertainty, organizational redundancy and government subsidies need to play their complementary effects in order to achieve a higher level of technology convergence.
Most of the existing studies use statistical regression methods, ignoring the linkage matching effect between different dimensions of factors, and thus it is difficult to systematically explain the mechanism of multi-factor synergies. This paper is dedicated to answering how enterprise technology convergence occurs and how to stimulate its occurrence under the uncertain environment. Compared with the existing relevant research, it brings environmental uncertainty into the research framework, breaks through the existing perspective of single factor net effect research for technology convergence. The research conclusions advance the theoretical understanding of the complex interaction between the multiple influencing factors of technology convergence under the uncertain environment, reveal the supporting forces and driving factors of enterprise technology convergence, and provide practical enlightenment for improving the level of enterprise technology convergence. The study is subjective to a few limitations in sample size and research methods. Future research could focus on more industries, conduct a more detailed and comprehensive study of the antecedent configuration of technology integration based on the actual impact of other internal and external factors on technology integration within the enterprise, and add the time factor in panel data to explore the stability and dynamics of the antecedent configuration of technology convergence.
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Received: 25 July 2022
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