اثرات مثبت یادگیری ارتباط و ظرفیت جذب بر روی نوآوری عملکرد و مزیت رقابتی در بازارهای صنعتی

This study utilized structural equations modeling (SEM) to explore the positive effects of relationship learning and absorptive capacity on competitive advantages of companies through their innovation performances in Taiwanese manufacturing industry. The results of this study showed that relationship learning and absorptive capacity positively influence upon innovation performances of companies, and further have positive effects on competitive advantages of companies. In addition, this study divided the sample into three groups by the levels of relationship learning and absorptive capacity and found that there was a significant difference of innovation performance among these three groups: ‘Highly Capable Companies’, ‘Medially Capable Companies’, and ‘Lowly Capable Companies’. It is important for ‘Lowly Capable Companies’ to increase both of their relationship learning and absorptive capacity to enhance their innovation performances.

If companies want to obtain sustainable competitive advantages, they can implement strategies that exploit their internal strengths and external opportunities and avoid their external threats and internal weaknesses (Barney, 1991 and Porter, 1985). In the era of knowledge economy nowadays, innovation becomes a key source of competitive advantages (Daghfous, 2004 and Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006). Successful innovation is affected by several environmental and contextual factors (Roberts and Amit, 2003 and Roberts, 2003). For example, to improve innovation performance, companies are motivated to engage in learning activities in order to enhance their innovation capabilities under the context of technological changes and increasing global competition. Companies can learn from one another to increase their knowledge stock by the relationship learning. In the Chinese context, “guanxi” is as well as relationship, found to be important for business trust in the Chinese social connections (Farh, Tsui, Xin, & Cheng, 1998). Guanxi means the connection and networking between one and the others, such as the connections between companies and their suppliers, clients, and customers, etc. Relationship learning means that the management can develop and promote the learning capabilities of targeted customer–supplier relationships. Within the customer–supplier relationship, relationship learning cannot be mandated by either organization, but depends on both parties' willingness to cooperate in learning activities (Selnes & Sallis, 2003). Management can promote relationship learning by cultivating a collaborative culture and formulating specific objectives for joint learning activities (Selnes & Sallis, 2003). However, there was no research exploring the relationship between relationship learning and innovation performance. Therefore, this study wants to fill this research gap. Besides the external relationship learning, companies need to have the internal capability—absorptive capacity to enhance their innovation performance. Absorptive capacity is defined as the ability to enable firms to effectively acquire and utilize external knowledge as well as internal one which affects their innovations (Daghfous, 2004 and Fichman, 2004). Companies can not only rely solely on their external networking, but also have to develop their absorptive capabilities to obtain knowledge actively (Matthyssens, Pauwels, & Vandenbempt, 2005). They need to have approaches and mechanisms to learn, to disseminate, and to exploit knowledge which can lead to the new organizational innovations (Daghfous, 2004). Absorptive capacities of firms can influence the effectiveness of innovation activities (Cockburn & Henderson, 1998). There was no prior study exploring the influences of the external factor and the internal factor upon innovation performance. This research selected the external factor, relationship learning, and the internal factor, absorptive capability, and explored their influences on the competitive advantage through the full mediator, innovation performance, in the Taiwanese manufacturing industry. Hence, the two antecedents of the research framework in this study are relationship learning and absorptive capacity, and the consequent is competitive advantage, while the full mediator is innovation performance. This study addressed three research issues. First, is relationship learning positively associated with innovation performance? Second, is absorptive capacity positively associated with innovation performance? Third, is innovation performance the mediator between the two antecedents, relationship learning and absorptive capacity, and the consequent, competitive advantage? The structure of this study was as follows. A literature review was discussed in Section 2, and three hypotheses were also proposed in this section. In Section 3, this study described the methodology, the sample and data collection, and the measurements of constructs. Next, the descriptive statistics, reliability of the measurement, correlations between constructs, and the results of LISREL were shown in Section 4. In the end, this study mentioned the conclusions and implications in Section 5.

The empirical results of this study showed that relationship learning and absorptive capacity had positive effects on innovation performance, and innovation performance had a positive effect on competitive advantage. Therefore, Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3 were supported in this study. Hence, this research indicated that the more the investments in relationship learning and absorptive capacity, the better is the innovation performance. Besides, the more investments in innovation performance, the better is the competitive advantage. Therefore, in the era of knowledge economy, investments in the external determinant—relationship learning, and the internal determinant—absorptive capacity, is more important for companies to enhance their innovation performances and competitive advantages. Therefore, in the era of knowledge economy, companies should consider both of external and internal determinants simultaneously. Previous research focused on the either internal or external effect on innovation performance or competitive advantage, but there was no research taking into the effects of both. Companies can not only rely on external information by relationship learning, but also develop capabilities to actively absorb relevant knowledge. This study summarized the literature on the relationship learning and absorptive capacity into a new managerial framework from the view of knowledge management. The results showed the internal and external effect of innovation—relationship learning and absorptive capacity fit the model exactly from the result of SEM. Therefore, this study indicated that relationship learning and absorptive capacity are two positive determinants for innovation performance and competitive advantage, and innovation performance mediates the relationship between relationship learning and competitive advantage, and that between absorptive capacity and competitive advantage. Besides, previous samples in the stream of research were drawn form Western companies, we do not know whether such cultural effect generalize to Chinese social–cultural settings. Therefore, we conducted the study to explore the idea of relationship learning in a different cultural context, Taiwan, where guanxi is thought to be the social relations which are the principles of interaction and social treatment between individuals who are connected by different guanxi bases. In a relation-centered world, trust is particularly important under such circumstances. This study found that the relationship learning is positively related to innovation performance in the Taiwanese manufacturing industry. Abundant research opportunities exist in the areas of relationship learning, absorptive capacity, innovation performance and competitive advantage. Next, this research raised five topics for future studies. First, this study focused on the manufacturing industry in Taiwan, so further studies can focus on other industries or countries and compare with this study. Second, this study verified hypotheses by use of questionnaire survey, only providing cross-sectional data, so that this study can't observe the dynamic change of innovation performance and competitive advantage in the process of the development of the manufacturing industry in Taiwan through longitudinal data. Therefore, future studies can set forth toward the longitudinal study to find out the differences of innovation performance and competitive advantage in the different stages of the development of the manufacturing industry in Taiwan. Third, this study discussed relationship learning from the perspective of the company itself, so the further studies can focus on the interaction between the company and its customers or suppliers. A fourth area of attention is the additional variables that might be added to the model, such as organizational antecedents (e.g., the capability of knowledge socialization, combination, articulation or internalization), and other mediators might be included (e.g., the performance of new product development, product differentiation). Future decisions about the inclusion of more variables must be taken into consideration the trade-offs between the need for a parsimonious model and the desire for comprehensive one. A fifth research topic is to develop a multilevel model of innovation performance. Future studies can investigate the effect of individual-level and organizational-level factors on observed behavior such as learning and absorptive capacity and the subsequent development of innovation performance. Finally, this study hopes that the research results are beneficial to managers, researchers, or governments, and contribute to relevant studies and future researches as reference.