روند بین المللی شدن در بالادست : نقش سرمایه اجتماعی در ایجاد قابلیت های اکتشافی و عملکرد بازار

This paper investigates to what extent resource governance of international ventures affects dynamic capability and market performance in the high-tech firms’ internationalization process. We examine the non-equity-based international network collaborations of high-tech firms as forms of strategic resource seeking within the internationalization process. Within the context of upstream technology collaborations by international software and hardware firms, this paper proposes and empirically examines the impact of resource governance mechanisms (i.e. trust-building and behavioral monitoring) on the exploratory capabilities of firms. The findings indicate that building trust in the internationalization process of network ventures contributes to the firm-level exploratory capabilities and, in turn, market performance. Furthermore, this paper tests the moderating effects of structural capital on the capability–performance relationship. The relationship is stronger when network relationships existed before the inception of the international technology alliance. We also find a negative moderating effect from the existence of an actual alliance and from network duration on the relationship between exploratory capability and market performance. To this end, the longevity of the alliance may not always be something firms should aim for. The paper highlights the criticality of relational and structural capital in the internationalization process and the importance of exploratory capability for creating radical innovation in high-tech industries.

To what extent does resource governance of international ventures affect dynamic capability and market performance in the internationalization process of high-tech firms? Does structural capital moderate the relationship between dynamic capability and market performance? Tackling these questions are critically important as the imperatives of the high-velocity market prompt geographically and culturally isolated firms to form international technological collaborations and network relationships. Resource exchange governance (which can include mechanisms such as trust-building and behavioral monitoring) in international network collaborations are of crucial importance as resource acquisition and protection is a double-edged sword in the internationalization process of firms. International network collaborations such as international technology alliances (ITAs) are frequently used governance structures, and individual participants (i.e. firms) in the network ventures should develop technology resource exchange governance in their international business (Yilmaz & Kabadayi, 2006). Technological interactions between these firms within the international networks enable the exchange of complementary technology resources, facilitating innovation-creating dynamic capabilities (see e.g. Buckley and Casson, 2009, Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000, Griffith and Harvey, 2001, Sapienza et al., 2006, Teece, 2007 and Teece et al., 1997). The business network internationalization process model emphasizes the role of social capital such as trust-building from the relational network perspective (Johanson and Vahlne, 2006, Johanson and Vahlne, 2009 and Vahlne et al., 2011). Particularly, from a value chain perspective, the recent paper of Johanson and Vahlne (2009, p. 1427) points out: ‘while there is considerable research on global supply chain development, little of it appears in international business (IB) journals compared with the number of studies on market-seeking internationalization’. However, to date, the majority of interfirm studies in IB have focused on vertical relationships in downstream value chains. Although the idea of relationship building through social capital (e.g. trust) is relatively well established in the literature, this type of research deals with international manufacturer-distributor or exporting manufacturer–importing distributor relationships from a downstream relationship perspective. A large amount of value is generated through the technology-related activities of firms at the upstream end (e.g. design, basic and applied research and development (R&D) and commercialization efforts) ( Ahuja and Katila, 2001, Mudambi, 2007 and Teece, 1996). Indeed, considering the importance of technology and complementary resources that endow firms with their strategic position (Teece & Pisano, 1994), studies on the behavior of technology-based and innovative firms are not as common in the IB literature as would be expected ( Cheng and Bolon, 1993, Griffith et al., 2008 and Tsang et al., 2008). Nevertheless, recent empirical research on the internationalization process has primarily focused on the market growth of multinational (Buckley & Casson, 2009) and small and medium sized enterprises (Heide, 1994); incremental behavior of firms for exploiting market opportunity (Johanson & Vahlne, 2006); incremental internationalization paths taken by firms such as exports, licensing, subsidiaries, and wholly owned ventures (Malhotra & Hinings, 2010); and downstream activities (Mudambi & Navarra, 2004). Work focusing on market-seeking activities fails to uncover firms’ technology-resource-seeking and upstream internationalization behavior (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). This paper develops an integrative model, drawing from internationalization, social capital, and dynamic capability theories. Then, it empirically examines to what extent resource governance of international ventures affects dynamic capability and market performance in the high-tech firms’ internationalization process. Particularly, we focus on the roles of social capital in creating dynamic capability in the internationalization process and achieving market performance. Within the research context of technological network collaborations in upstream value chains, we select key software and hardware companies in the rapidly growing mobile computing market (see Appendix A). Within short time periods, internationalization via ITAs allows software and hardware firms in the upstream value chain to complement each other by combining unique resources and developing innovation-creating capabilities (Harrison et al., 2001, Jaworski et al., 2000, Kotabe and Swan, 1995, Shapiro and Varian, 1999 and Teece, 1996). We test our hypotheses by using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the up-to-date survey data from 110 high-tech firms forming international network ventures. Overall, our contribution to the existing literature is threefold. Firstly, this paper contributes to an empirical explanation of the extent to which resource governance mechanisms affect heterogeneous firms’ own dynamic capabilities within the upstream internationalization process and as a result, market performance. Secondly, this paper extends the recent theory of business network internationalization process (see e.g. Santangelo & Meyer, 2011) by introducing the resource-protective mechanism and dynamic capabilities into the internationalization process model. Particularly, in the context of the explosively growing mobile computing industries (see Appendix A), we find that relational capital (i.e. trust building) has a positive effect on exploratory capability. Our findings provide a deep understanding of how strategic resource-seeking firms’ relational capital is of critical importance to network ventures’ upstream internationalization process. Finally, we also find that structural capital (i.e. network specific experience) has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between exploratory capability and market performance. Thus, this paper affirms the importance of social capital and when using business network terms, network insidership, for the upstream internationalization of network ventures, thereby supporting the recently theorized business network internationalization process model of Johanson and Vahlne (2009).

To what extent resource governance of international ventures affects dynamic capability and market performance in the high-tech firms’ internationalization process? Our response is that (1) trust building positively affects (dynamic) exploratory capability, (2) exploratory capability has a strong impact on market performance and (3) this effect is moderated by network-specific experience but not by network duration. Does structural capital moderate the relationship between dynamic capability and market performance? Our answer to the question is yes, research context, the existence of the previous network tie positively and significantly moderates the relationship. Our conceptual model (see Fig. 1) integrates resource governance mechanisms and dynamic capability into the internationalization model. In the context of international technology network ventures (i.e. ITAs) within complementary high-tech industries, our findings show that social capital evidently plays a critical role in building up dynamic capability and producing superior market performance in the upstream internationalization process. By following this approach, we believe that firms can improve their dynamic capability through upstream internationalization and thus change their network positions. Appendix A. Mobile computing industry The market has become a worldwide phenomenon over recent years, and continues to grow. It is one of the most dynamic markets today, and the global integration and coordination of dispersed technology resources is a key aspect of how firms develop highly innovative products and reap economic benefits in short windows of time. According to Gartner (2011), worldwide Smartphone shipments grew by over 200% between 2010 and 2012, and it is expected (see also Wingfiend & Clark, 2011) that annual worldwide shipments will reach 1.1 billion units in 2015, exceeding the corresponding figure for shipments of personal computers. The mobile computing market can be characterized as a very high-velocity environment in terms of the rapid change and growth of the market. Fig. 3 illustrates a simplified value chain of the mobile computing market. At the upper end of the hardware side, chip design and foundry firms cooperate with chip vendors. For instance, ARM, the UK-based chipset design firm, licenses its technologies to foreign system-on-chip (SoC) firms (e.g. Qualcomm, Texas Instrument, FreeScale, Marvel, Samsung, and others) (Waters, 2011). These hardware firms compete against previously dominant “x86-based” silicon manufacturers (e.g. Intel, AMD, and VIA), which are relatively stronger in the personal computer market. Some hardware firms specialize in the design and sale of semiconductor chips (e.g. fabless semiconductors) while outsourcing the fabrication of their products to specialized manufacturers such as foundries. Other types of hardware firms produce communication units (e.g. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi), graphics processing units (e.g. graphics chips), and microcontrollers (e.g. application chips). At the upstream end of the value chain, hardware and software firms cooperate strategically to build unique software architectures on top of hardware platforms: device manufacturers are the main customers of hardware and software firms (Catalan and Kotzab, 2003 and Dedrick et al., 2008). Particularly, open source operating systems (OSs) are becoming more and more popular on the market (e.g. Linux, Android, and Chrome OS architectures) instead of Nokia's Symbian OS and Microsoft's commercial Windows Mobile and Windows XP OS platforms that dominated previously (Gartner, 2010 and Palmer, 2010). Based on the low-level OS platforms, numerous software firms are developing a wide range of software applications and middleware (e.g. office, communications, mail, personal information management, security, multimedia players, browsers, entertainment, location-based software, power management, audio and video solutions, and databases). OS firms often integrate key software applications with their data structures (“stacks”). The OS firms also adapt and optimize their platform technologies to suit particular chip designs from hardware firms, and vice versa. Software application platform providers often port their libraries to chips when hardware firms release new chip designs (e.g. Sun Microsystems’ x86-based Java platform was ported to new ARM-based chips).