Diverse Ties with Service Intermediaries and Established Firms' Service Innovation: The Moderating Role of Technological Capability

摘要

In this study, we examine the relationship between established manufacturing firms' diverse ties with service intermediaries and their service innovation. Because service intermediaries continuously produce knowledge and act as channels that provide access to external knowledge, thereby diverse ties with service intermediaries grant the firms to extensive heterogeneous and non-local knowledge sources in a way that firms with primarily redundant ties do not. We propose that established manufacturing firms' diverse ties with service intermediaries enable the firms to access these external knowledge and contribute to the firms' service innovation by broadening the scope of search as well as facilitating the non-local search. Moreover, we argue that the positively relationship between diverse ties with service intermediaries and established firms' service innovation will become stronger when firms possess more technological capability. Based upon a sample of established firms in China, our results support these arguments.