Abstract:

At present, China’s technological environment is in the process of ever-increasing change. Technological breakthrough innovation has become an important means for enterprises to obtain technological advantages and market dominance. Compared with the traditional industrial economy era, in the digital economy era, the technological innovation of digital enterprises no longer adheres to the linear innovation process of the generation, implementation and application of creative ideas, but is an innovation process of multiple-factor interaction, multiple-process parallel and multiple-organization linkage. Enterprises need to pay more attention to the construction of an open innovation environment and the exploration of borderless knowledge. Although in recent years, researchers have widely discussed the antecedents of technological breakthrough innovation from the perspectives of network relationship, institutional practice and external environment, the technological breakthrough innovation of digital enterprises in China still shows the characteristics of weak foundation, prominent weaknesses and insufficient motivation. As a typical organizational capability to encourage organizational members to try and make mistakes, the organizational playfulness dynamism is likely to provide a new perspective for explaining the technological breakthrough innovation.
Based on the dynamic capability theory and the affective event theory, this paper introduces the digital strategic flexibility and the exploratory knowledge search into the relationship mechanism between the organizational playfulness dynamism and the technological breakthrough innovation to construct a moderated mediation model with the exploratory knowledge search as the mediator and the digital strategic flexibility as the moderator. The research takes 478 digital enterprise managers as the research object, and uses the hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrap method to test the model. The results of the study are as follows: The organizational playfulness dynamism has a significant positive impact on the technological breakthrough innovation; The exploratory knowledge search plays a mediating role between the organizational playfulness dynamism and the technological breakthrough innovation; High digital strategic flexibility can strengthen the positive effect of the organizational playfulness dynamism on the exploratory knowledge search, thus promoting the technological breakthrough innovation, while low digital strategic flexibility has no significant effect.
The theoretical contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in the following three aspects: Firstly, this paper breaks through the limitations of the traditional enterprise innovation management research framework, takes digital enterprises as the research object, and reveals the antecedents of the technological breakthrough innovation of digital enterprises from the perspective of the playfulness dynamism. It not only enriches the antecedents of the technological breakthrough innovation and expands the theoretical situation of the formation of the technological breakthrough innovation, but also combines the organizational playfulness dynamism with the digital innovation, promotes the research of the organizational playfulness dynamism from the general innovation situation to the digital innovation situation, and provides new ideas for the research of the innovation management of digital enterprises. Secondly, based on the unique innovation situation of digital enterprises, this paper explores the impact mechanism of the organizational playfulness dynamism on the technological breakthrough innovation of digital enterprises from the perspective of the exploratory knowledge search. This not only provides a new perspective for the formation path of the technological breakthrough innovation, but also promotes the deep situational development of the knowledge search research. Finally, from the perspective of the digital strategic flexibility, this paper reveals the boundary conditions of the impact of the organizational playfulness dynamism on the technological breakthrough innovation, which enriches the current research on the strategic flexibility. It is found that that strategic flexibility can not always bring innovation effect to the organization, but can only play its positive effect when it reaches a certain level. Moreover, low strategic flexibility is not always harmful to the organizational innovation, but does not significantly strengthen the formation of the organizational innovation.

Key words: Organization Playfulness Dynamism, Digital Strategy Flexibility, Exploratory Knowledge Search, Technological Breakthrough Innovation

摘要：

技术突破性创新是数字企业获得竞争优势的关键途径,而组织容错能力为解释技术突破性创新提供了新视角,但现有研究却鲜少探讨组织容错能力如何助推企业实现技术突破性创新。本文基于动态能力理论与情绪事件理论,以478位数字企业管理者为调研对象,从数字战略柔性与探索性知识搜索视角解析了组织容错能力对技术突破性创新的影响边界与路径。结果显示:组织容错能力对技术突破性创新具有显著正向影响;探索性知识搜索在组织容错能力与技术突破性创新间起中介作用;高数字战略柔性能够强化组织容错能力对探索性知识搜索的积极作用,进而增进技术突破性创新,而低数字战略柔性却无显著影响。研究结论揭示了数字企业技术突破的实现条件,为数字企业技术创新管理实践提供借鉴。

关键词: 组织容错能力, 数字战略柔性, 探索性知识搜索, 技术突破性创新