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Chinese firms were operating within a closed economic environment before the “opening up” in the late 1970s, but it has only been in the late 1990s that China has recognized the importance of innovation. The Chinese government has attempted to rectify this liability by providing funding to assist Chinese firms in developing innovation capability by increasing R&D collaborations and employing external experts. The purpose of this paper is to study the innovation of Chinese firms by examining how internal and external resources interactively impact the innovation capability.

Panel data collected from Chinese manufacturers are used to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results have shown that the interplay between internal and external resources exhibits differential patterns of impact on innovation capability. The authors discover different moderating patterns of the two types of external resources: visiting experts are helpful in enhancing the effects of internal human resources, while R&D collaborations are useful in exploiting internal financial and physical resources, even when the main effect of financial resources on innovation capability is not significant.

The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidences on the roles of absorbed external resources and knowledge to catalyze internal resources in building up innovation capability in an emerging economy.

Grounded in inter-firm collaboration contexts, this study examines the influence of technological relatedness – encompassing technological similarity and complementarity – on the innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises in emerging economies, with a focus on how environmental dynamism, competitiveness and firm life cycle stages moderate these relationships.

The authors empirically tested the hypotheses based on the data of Chinese listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2021.

Both technological similarity and complementarity positively impact innovation performance. Environmental dynamism enhances the positive effects of technological similarity, while environmental competitiveness amplifies the advantages of technological complementarity. The innovation benefits brought by technological relatedness differ across life cycle stages, with technological similarity preferred at the introduction phase and complementarity preferred at the growth and mature stages.

This study enriches the research on the driving factors of innovation performance from the perspective of technological relatedness. The authors extend the boundaries of technological relatedness research by systematically examining the moderating roles of environmental dynamism, competitiveness and the enterprise life cycle. The findings provide valuable insights for managers in manufacturing enterprises on how to formulate effective partner selection strategies that align with external environmental changes and the stages of enterprise development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of two dimensions of technological relatedness, namely technological similarity and complementarity, on collaborative performance, plus the mediating role of collaboration network stickiness and the moderating role of partner expertise and geographical distance in interfirm collaboration contexts.

This study takes Chinese Scientific and Technological Achievements (STA) of inter-firm collaboration in five high-tech fields in 2010–2020 as the sample and uses OLS regression to test the hypothesis.

Technological similarity and complementarity positively affect collaborative performance. Partner expertise negatively moderates the relationship between similarity, complementarity and collaborative performance. Geographical distance positively moderates the relationship between similarity and collaborative performance while negatively moderates that between complementarity and collaborative performance. Collaboration network stickiness partly mediates the relationship between similarity and collaborative performance.

This study expands literature on inter-firm collaboration, especially research on the antecedents of collaborative performance. Moreover, this study not only compensates for lack of empirical analysis in partner selection research, but also utilizes second-hand data to enhance the objectivity of analysis. Additionally, we enrich the research on the moderating role of partner expertise and geographical distance as well as the mediating role of collaboration network stickiness.

Focusing on internal corporate governance, the purpose of this paper is to apply the shareholder activism perspective to consider how large shareholder participation behaviors might influence firm innovation performance. Specifically, “confrontationally strategic intervention” and “cooperatively strategic consensus” participation behaviors are examined and hypothesized to have different effects on managers’ risk-taking and firm innovation performance.

Drawing on 182 Chinese firm samples, this paper applies hierarchical ordinary least-squares regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that strategic intervention was negatively associated with managers’ risk-taking and firm innovation performance, while strategic consensus positively affected managers’ risk-taking and firm innovation performance. Moreover, managers’ risk-taking fully mediated the influence of strategic intervention on firm innovation performance, whereas it partially mediated the influence of strategic consensus on firm innovation performance.

The study extends research on shareholder participation by construing that large shareholders’ participation behaviors can significantly influence managers’ risk-taking and corporate innovation performance, further deepening the understanding of the influences of large shareholders on the firm-level outcomes. The theoretical and practical implications of this finding are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the dimensions and formation mechanisms of brand value on social media platforms within the prosumption logic based on the theory of value co-creation. By adopting a process-oriented mindset, this study deconstructs and applies the prosumption theory and the theory of value co-creation in the field of social media, thereby addressing the insufficiencies of previous research that focused primarily on the subject mindset. It offers reference ideas for social media brand managers to attract prosumers to engage in value co-creation.

The crawler technology and grounded theoretical method were adopted in this research paper.

Based on the logic of prosumption and the theory of value co-creation, the research finds that the brand value of social media platforms is composed of seven dimensions. The dimensions include brand recognition, brand perception quality, brand experience, brand value-in-use, brand relationship quality, brand loyalty and brand co-creation behavior. From the perspective of prosumption logic, the formation of brand value on social media platforms is a gradual accumulation process. This process involves prosumers participating in prosumption activities, progressing through several stages. Initially, it starts with “prosumption conditions”, which include brand recognition, brand perception quality and brand experience. It then moves to “prosumption processes,” characterized by brand value-in-use and brand relationship quality. Finally, it culminates in “prosumption outcomes,” represented by brand loyalty and brand co-creation behavior. From the perspective of value creation, the formation of brand value on social media platforms is a closed-loop process that includes “brand value identification and empowerment—brand value acquisition and transformation—brand value co-creation and relationship upgradation—brand value co-creation and stability—brand value feedback and iteration.”

The findings contribute to expanding prosumption and co-creation theory and enriching the prosumption logic frame. Meanwhile, it is conducive to encouraging prosumers to participate in the platform’s prosumption activities and jointly creating the brand value of the social media platform. This paper interprets prosumption through the lens of the value co-creation process.