The Evolving Impact of Combinatorial Opportunities and Exhaustion on Innovation by Business Groups as Market Development Increases: The Case of Taiwan

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mahmood, Ishtiaq; Chung, Chi-Nien; Mitchell, Will
• 署名单位: National University of Singapore; International Institute for Management Development (IMD); Duke University; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1120.1605
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1142-1161
• 关键词: strategy; Effectiveness; generalized networks; research and development; INNOVATION; business groups; market development

摘要

Business groups are key sources of innovation in emerging market economies, but we understand little about why innovativeness differs across groups and over time. Variation in the density of intragroup buyer-supplier ties, which are common structural linkages among group affiliates, can help explain both cross-sectional and temporal heterogeneity of group innovativeness. We argue that greater buyer-supplier density within a group initially creates combinatorial opportunities that contribute to group innovativeness but ultimately generates combinatorial exhaustion that constrains innovation. Combinatorial exhaustion will set in at lower levels of density as the market environment becomes more developed because the opportunity costs of local search increase. The research introduces a dynamic argument to studies of business-group innovation.