中国企业技术创新能力审计.pdf

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1、Research Policy 33(2004)11231140An audit of technological innovation capabilities in chinese firms:some empirical findings in Beijing,ChinaRichard C.M.Yama,Jian Cheng Guanb,Kit Fai Punc,Esther P.Y.TangdaDepartment of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management,City University of Hong Kong,T

2、at Chee Avenue,Hong Kong,ChinabSchool of Management,Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,Beijing,ChinacDepartment of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering,The University of the West Indies,St Augustine Campus,Trinidad,BoliviadDepartment of Management and Marketing,The Hong Kong Poly

3、technic University,Hung Hom,Hong Kong,ChinaReceived 27 November 2002;received in revised form 5 May 2004;accepted 17 May 2004Available online 9 August 2004AbstractRecent studies have advocated different technological innovation capabilities(TICs)and discussed their impact on a firmscompetitive perfo

4、rmance.This paper introduces a study framework of innovation audit and examines the relevance of sevenTICs to building and sustaining the competitiveness of Chinese firms.Empirical data was acquired through a recent studyof 213 Chinese firms in Beijing,China.Regression analysis was employed to exami

5、ne the correlation between TICs andinnovation rate,sales growth,and product competitiveness among these firms.The findings verify that R&D and resourcesallocationcapabilitiesarethetwomostimportantTICs.AstrongR&Dcapabilitycouldsafeguardinnovationrateandproductcompetitiveness in large and medium-sized

6、 firms,whereas a resources allocation capability would enhance the sales growthin small firms.However,the impact of learning and organising capabilities on a firms innovation performance has yet to beinvestigated.The findings of this paper suggest that Chinese firms should consider a more balanced f

7、ocus on their TICs harmonisingenhancement.In order to maintain their sustainable development,effectively plan and implement their innovation strategiesas well as enhance their whole innovation capability,Chinese firms should closely relate their TICs to the formulation oftechnology strategy and harm

8、onisation of innovation and R&D activities.2004 Elsevier B.V.All rights reserved.Keywords:Innovation audit;Technological innovation capability;Chinese firms1.IntroductionRecent developments of the World Trade Organi-zation and other international trade agreements haveCorresponding author.E-mailaddre

9、sses:merycityu.edu.hk(R.C.M.Yam),guan-(J.C.Guan),kfpuneng.uwi.tt(K.F.Pun),mses-therpolyu.edu.hk(E.P.Y.Tang).forced industries worldwide to face a new era of in-tense global competition.As competitive pressures in-crease,the need to continuously adapt,develop andinnovate has become a basic building b

10、lock for orga-nizational excellence.In a dynamic environment,aninability to innovate eventually causes businesses tostagnate and firms to go out of business.Many stud-ies have shown that technological innovation couldbring positive impacts,enhancing the competitiveness0048-7333/$see front matter 200

11、4 Elsevier B.V.All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.respol.2004.05.0041124R.C.M.Yam et al./Research Policy 33(2004)11231140of firms(Dierickx and Cool,1989;Guan,2002).Sofar we have seen a growing amount of interest fromindustry,academics and governments on how innova-tions could be better managed.For ex

12、ample,the UKDepartmentofTradeandIndustry(DTI)seestechnicalinnovation as one of the drivers of national competi-tiveness and explores means to encourage companiesto develop and improve their innovation managementprocesses and performance.An extensive research isbeing conducted in 2003 with the object

13、ive of findingout what the DTI and UK government might act toincrease UK innovation performance(Department ofTrade and Industry,2003).During the central planning era of China,re-search was conducted by research institutes;resultantproducts were manufactured by factories,and thendistributed by distri

14、butors.Manufacturing firms hadneither the mandate nor incentive to introduce in-novation and change(Naughton,1990).Over thepast two decades,the transformation of the Chineseeconomic system from a centrally planned to a freemarket economy has had great impact on the Chi-nese innovation system(Brockho

15、ff and Guan,1996;Liu and White,2001a,b).The Chinese governmenthas made dramatic progress towards a more effectiveand efficient national innovation system compared toits performance under central planning.The trans-formation included changing government legislationand its administrative system,changi

16、ng the evalua-tion system,reforming the R&D funding system,andredistributing innovative activities among actors(i.e.research institutes,manufacturing firms,universitiesand government departments).The economic andenterprise reforms over the last 20 years have signif-icantly improved the development,d

17、iffusion and im-plementation of technological innovation in Chinesefirms(Guan and Ma,2003).A major thrust has beenthe attempt to co-locate R&D activities with imple-mentation,i.e.for manufacturing firms to undertakeR&D.The central government has created incentivesfor firms to establish in-house R&D

18、departments,andthese units have increased dramatically,from 7000in 1987 to over 24,000 by 1998(China Science andTechnology Statistics,1992,1998).In 1999,242large-scale research institutions,which were previ-ously directly controlled by the State Economic andTrade Commission,one of the most powerful

19、entitiesin the State Council,became S&T-intensive enter-prises(China S&T Development Report,2000).After2000,over 5000 applied research institutes,formerlyfinancially supported by the Chinese government,nolonger received any money from the government fortheir operations.These results have been the em

20、er-gence of a new national innovation system thatintegrates government S&T efforts with the businessactivities of industrial enterprises(Liu and White,2001b).The formation of this new innovation systemhas greatly increased Chinas indigenous innovativecapability to develop and utilize technology,incl

21、ud-ing its capability to assimilate and improve upontechnology transferred from the advanced economies(Lu and Lazonick,2001).Despite all these changes,the legacy of decades oftop-down,central government control over all aspectsof the economy still impacts the business philosophiesof many companies.I

22、n particular,SOEs are not heldhighly responsible for the economic risk of innova-tion.Successandfailureofinnovationdependnotonlyon a firms technological capabilities,but also on itsfinancial allocation and decisions of the planning au-thorities and on political priorities.One means of getting compan

23、ies to improve theirtechnological innovation management processes andperformance is to develop an audit that could trig-ger improvement in a companys practices.Such au-dits can be used by companies for self assessmentor third-party independent assessment to identify thegaps and locate the problems o

24、f their capability statusand processes.This paper attempts to develop such anauditing framework for Chinese firms that can help todetermine the subtle links between innovation capa-bilities and business performance;and to enable theauditor to determine whether good practice is in place.2.Technologic

25、al innovation capabilities(TICs)Burgelman et al.(2004)define TICs as a com-prehensive set of characteristics of an organizationthat facilitates and supports its technological innova-tion strategies.TICs are a kind of special assets orresources that include technology,product,process,knowledge,experi

26、ence and organization(Guan andMa,2003).Improving TICs can be beneficial to a firmand leads to enhanced competitiveness.For instance,Lawless and Fisher(1990)argue that successfulR.C.M.Yam et al./Research Policy 33(2004)112311401125new product introductions can provide the potentialfor firms to gain m

27、arket position and realise morelonger term returns than would otherwise be possible.Evangelista et al.(1997)regard R&D activities as acentral component of the technological innovationactivities of firms and as the most important intan-gible innovation expenditure.According to Peteraf(1993),a firms h

28、eterogeneous resource portfolios(including human,capital and technology resources)are responsible for observed variability in its finan-cial returns.These are a firms specific competencies,which contribute substantially to the sales growthand competitive advantage.There would have to be acausal conn

29、ection between a firms resources and per-formance.Dierickx and Cool(1989)argue that firmsshould attempt either to imitate high-performing re-sources or to develop alternative resources that couldproduce similar benefits.Successful technological innovation depends notonly on technological capability,

30、but also on othercritical capabilities in the areas of manufacturing,mar-keting,organization,strategy planning,learning,andresources allocation.According to Adler and Shenbar(1990),four types of TICs are identified,including(1)the capability of satisfying market requirement bydeveloping new products

31、;(2)the capability of manu-facturing these products by using appropriate processtechnology;(3)the capability of satisfying futureneeds by developing and introducing new productsand new process technology,and;(4)the capabilityto respond to an unanticipated technology activitybrought about by competit

32、ors and unforeseen cir-cumstances.These capabilities exist in a firm and atcorporate levels.3.A study framework for innovation auditWedrewonexistingresearchininnovationmanage-ment to develop the content of the audit of technicalinnovation.Studies which identified characteristics oftechnically progre

33、ssive firms and factors associatedwith success or failure in innovation contributed tothe audit framework to be developed.Cooper(1980)suggested three variables which are related to thecontext of innovationthe nature of the product,themarket environment and the existence of potentialproducttechnology

34、 synergy.Rothwell(1992)pro-vided a good summary of key factors that emergedin many innovation management studies,which arehighlighted below.Good internal and external communication.Treating innovation as a corporate wide task.Implementing careful planning and project controlprocedures.Efficiency in

35、development work and high qualityproduction.Strong market orientation.Providing good technical service to customers.Presence of certain key individuals as technologicalgatekeepers.High quality management.Cooper(1996)further established that there werethree critical success factors for drivers of new

36、 productperformance:High quality new product process.Adequate resource commitment.A clear and well-communicated new product strat-egy.Various researchers and institutions adopted variouscomponents to audit a firms TICs.For instance,theinnovative capabilities audit framework proposed byBurgelman et a

37、l.in 1988(2004)included five auditdimensions:Resource availability and allocation.Capacity to understand competitors innovativestrategies and industry evolution.Capacitytounderstandtechnologicaldevelopments.Structural and cultural context.Strategic management capacity.Christensen(1995)classified TIC

38、s into science re-search asset,process innovation asset,product innova-tion asset and esthetics design asset.Bobe and Bobe(1998)adopted a checklist method for benchmark-ing innovation and practices in three European Unioncountries,namely,Germany,the UK and France.Sim-ilar to that advocated in the OS

39、LO manual(OECD,1997),the method addresses:The national innovation systems context.Innovation and firms strategy.Organizational structures and the organizationalmoves linking production,marketing and design.1126R.C.M.Yam et al./Research Policy 33(2004)11231140 Origin of technological resources.Manage

40、ment of human resources.Global innovation trends.Chiesa et al.(1996)developed a model for auditinga firms innovation capability which introduces twomethods to assess an organizationa process auditand a performance audit.The process audit focuseson the individual processes necessary for innovationand

41、 the extent to which best practice is in place.Theperformance audit focuses on the effectiveness of theindividual processes and of the overall process of in-novation,in terms of their impact on competitiveness.Based on extensive literature review,Chiesa et al iden-tified the subprocesses and element

42、s that made up theinnovation process.The full set of subprocesses issummarized as concept generation process,productdevelopment process,production process,technologyacquisition process,leadership process,resource pro-vision process and systems and tools provision pro-cess.In the performance audit,pe

43、rformances of eachof these processes as well as the global result of theinnovation process are measured.Similar to Chiesas approach,our innovation auditmodel includes both a capability audit and a per-formance audit.Integrating the findings of relevantliterature mentioned above,activities,or process

44、es,or characteristics that are found to be associatedwith innovation success and failure are put forwardas audit elements.These elements are then groupedunder seven capability dimensions.The functionalapproach is adopted in that each dimension,exceptlearning capability,represents a separate function

45、 ofthe organizationR&D,manufacturing,marketing,organising,resource allocation and strategic planning.In a relatively backward economy like China,wheremost firms are far from the modern managementfrontier,practitioners would find the asset concept(Christensen,1995)or process concept(Burgelmanet al.,2

46、004;Chiesa et al.,1996)difficult to com-prehend.The functional approach therefore has twoadvantages.First it is easy to understand,and second,it facilitates the multi-informants approach for thesurvey.Learning is an added dimension that has not beenexamined explicitly in previous innovation capabil-

47、ity research.Learning capability was defined as thecapacity to generate ideas with impact,across mul-tiple boundaries,and through specific managementinitiatives(Yeung et al.,1999);and the ability ofan organization to learn the lesson of its experienceand to pass those lessons across boundaries and t

48、ime(Ashkenasetal.,1995).Innovationisafragileandvul-nerable activity and some organizations suffer from aninability to sustain innovation over the long term.Thecapacitytosustaininnovationhasbeenassociatedwithorganization learning(Senge,1990;Leonard-Barton,1992,1995).Learning therefore has an importan

49、t roleto play in technological innovation.3.1.Capability auditA focus group discussion of senior executives frominnovative firms in Beijing was conducted to test userunderstanding of the initial version of the framework.Revisionsweremadebasedontheircomments.Abriefdescription of seven dimensions is g

50、iven below,and alist of auditing elements and the associated informantsare presented in Appendix A.Learning capability is a firms ability to identify,as-similate,and exploit knowledge from the environ-ment.R&D capability refers to a firms ability to integrateR&D strategy,project implementation,proje