Transformations  in
Business & Economics

RIVAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY AND INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF AN ENTERPRISE: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF DUAL APPROPRIABILITY MECHANISMS
Shengjun Wang, Lei Wang, Qiqi Xu, Ying Zhu

ABSTRACT. Rival absorptive capacity (RAC) and appropriability mechanisms (AMs) are two important concepts based on the opinion that enterprises can protect their internal generated intellectual assets to improve their innovation performance. The main objective of our study is to probe the joint effect of RAC and dual AMs on the innovation performance of enterprises (FIP), and to do this, we describe the AMs by distinguishing between formal appropriability mechanisms (FAM) and informal appropriability mechanisms (IAM). To examine our hypotheses, we empirically analyzed a sample of 297 manufacturing enterprises in China's Yangtze River Delta region. The results indicate that RAC has a direct, negative effect on FIP, and IAM negatively moderates the negative relationship between RAC and FIP, while the moderating role of FAM is insignificant. These findings are helpful for clarifying the influence of RAC on FIP under different AMs settings, thereby guiding enterprises to use different appropriability tools to avoid the negative influence of RAC and to better protect the innovation profits of enterprises.

KEYWORDS:  rival absorptive capacity, formal appropriability mechanisms, informal appropriability mechanisms, enterprise's innovation performance.

JEL classification:  F270.