研发国际化与企业创新绩效——吸收能力和地理多样性的调节作用

新兴经济体企业的国际化行为已经成为国际商务领域的研究热点之一,但如中国这样的新兴经济体的跨国企业是否能够通过研发国际化行为提升母公司的创新绩效,现有文献对该问题尚缺乏足够的研究。文章基于2011-2017年间沪深两市310家信息技术业上市跨国企业的年度观察数据,采用泊松面板固定效应模型考察了企业研发国际化与母公司创新绩效之间的关系,并首次从逆向知识转移的视角,探讨了吸收能力和地理多样性对研发国际化和创新绩效两者关系的调节作用。实证结果表明：中国企业的研发国际化显著促进母公司创新绩效的提升;以研发投入强度衡量的企业吸收能力显著正向调节研发国际化和创新绩效之间的关系,而以布劳异质性指数测量的地理多样性则显著负向调节研发国际化和创新绩效的关系。研究结果对中国企业国际化行为具有重要启示。该研究发现意味着中国企业在国际化过程中应该加大海外研发投资力度以提升母公司创新绩效,且为更好地实现外部知识的逆向转移,应同时提高企业总体研发投入强度。但作为新兴经济体企业,不宜在地理分布上实行快速扩张,否则较高的沟通和协调成本将弱化逆向知识转移的程度,而不利于母公司创新绩效的提升。

R&D Internationalization and Enterprise Innovation Performance: The Moderating Roles of Absorptive Capacity and Geographic Diversity

With the acceleration of globalization, more and more enterprises pursue the internationalization strategy. Especially, the enterprises from emerging markets, like China, have increasingly used internationalization as a way of gaining competitive advantage, with the result that the internationalization of multinational enterprises from emerging economies has being one of the research focuses in the field of international business. One of the reasons for the MNEs from emerging economies to internationalize is to acquire new knowledge and technologies. Some research argues that R&D in this process can help a company discover and absorb external knowledge. Innovation performance is an essential part of firm growth and development, for innovation enables enterprises as well as multinational enterprises to create and maintain competitive advantage. However, there is still insufficient research in extant literature on whether MNEs from emerging economies such as China can improve the innovation performance of their parent companies through R&D internationalization. This paper thus focuses on the relationship between R&D internationalization and parent companies' innovation performance. Based on a sample of 310 information technology MNEs listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2017, this paper investigates the relationship between the two variables, and for the first time explores the moderating roles of absorptive capacity and geographic diversity on the relationship between R&D internationalization and innovation performance from the perspective of reverse knowledge transfer. We applies the Poisson panel fixed effect model for regression, by taking innovation performance as dependent variable, R&D internationalization as independent variable, and absorptive capacity and geographic diversity as moderating variables. we also control for firm age, firm size, profitability and international experience. Our main research finding is that R&D internationalization of Chinese multinational enterprises significantly promotes the innovation performance of parent companies. Furthermore, absorptive capacity, which is measured by dividing each firm's R&D expenditures by its total sales, positively moderates the relationship between R&D internationalization and innovation performance. However, geographic diversity, which is measured by Blau heterogeneity index, negatively moderates the relationship between R&D internationalization and innovation performance. These findings have significant implications for Chinese multinational enterprises' R&D internationalization. First, we demonstrate that R&D internationalization may boost innovation performance of parent companies, suggesting that Chinese multinational enterprises can increase their overseas R&D investment to enable the subsidiaries to get access to new knowledge and resources which can enhance the innovation performance in the process of internationalization. Second, our research shows that multinational enterprises can achieve a greater innovation performance with higher absorptive capacity, this implies that in order to better realize the reverse transfer of external knowledge and technology to their parent companies, the overall R&D investment intensity should also be enhanced. Third, we show that although the development of R&D internationalization has a significantly positive effect on innovation performance, geographic distribution has a negative impact on the R&D internationalization-innovation performance relationship. Accordingly, we suggest that for multinational enterprises from emerging economies, it is not appropriate for them to expand geographically rapidly, because higher communication and coordination costs associated with geographic expansion will weaken the degree of reverse knowledge transfer and limit the improvement of innovation performance of their parent companies.