Product innovation : the influence of leadership and buyer-supplier collaboration in marketing channel
產品創新 : 領導的影響和營銷管道製造商與供應商的合作
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis
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Detail(s)
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Award date | 2 Oct 2015 |
Link(s)
Permanent Link | https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/theses/theses(3a0d4f0b-548b-43e2-be3f-b410190712de).html |
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Other link(s) | Links |
Abstract
This dissertation investigates product innovation from two perspectives. The first essay
looks at product innovation from within firms and the second essay focuses on external
collaboration. Specifically, the first essay investigates how internal firm leadership influences
product innovation. The second essay looks at the influence of two different kinds of inter-firm
integration mechanisms have on knowledge acquisition and product innovation.
First essay. Building on upper echelon theory and a dynamic capability perspective, this
study investigates the relative effectiveness of two types of leadership on product and process
innovations in emerging economies. We found that in China transformational-charismatic (TC)
leadership has a stronger effect on product innovation, while transactional leadership has a
stronger effect on process innovation. We further study the boundary conditions of leadership
and empirically examine the contingent effects of organizational level capability on the
relationships between leadership and innovation. The moderating effects are intriguing:
knowledge acquisition capability strengthens the effect of TC leadership on process innovation
and that of transactional leadership on product innovation. However, knowledge acquisition
capability attenuates the positive relationship between TC leadership and product innovation as
well as the positive relationship between transactional leadership and process innovation.
Second essay. In this study, we integrate three theoretical views – knowledge-based
view, agency theory and integration mechanisms – to investigate collaboration among channel
members. Specifically, we investigate the effects of two channel integration mechanisms on two
kinds of knowledge acquisition and examine how these two kinds of knowledge acquisition can
help buyers with new product innovation. We found that both supplier task involvement (a
cooperation mechanism) and joint-planning (a coordination mechanism) positively influence buyers’ product knowledge acquisition and customer knowledge acquisition. Supplier task
involvement has a stronger effect on product knowledge acquisition than that of joint-planning.
On the other hand, supplier task involvement has a significant positive effect on buyers’
customer knowledge acquisition while joint-planning has no effect. The relationships between
integration mechanisms and knowledge acquisition are contingent upon supplier incentives.
Furthermore, both product and customer knowledge lead to product innovation, but customer
knowledge has a stronger effect than product knowledge on product innovation. We provide
theoretical and managerial implications for our findings.
Keywords: Transformational-charismatic leadership, transactional leadership, product
innovation, process innovation, knowledge acquisition capability, channel cooperation and
coordination, supplier task involvement, joint- planning, product Knowledge, customer
Knowledge, supplier incentives.
- Leadership, New products, Industrial marketing.