中国企业“出口中学习”与创新能力提升：基于国际多元化视角

As many other emerging economies governments, Chinese government have been encouraging exporting as it believes that export performance is one of the most persuasive evidence of technological upgrading (Thun, 2006), expecting that EE exporters would gradually build higher value-added capabilities, such as innovation. However, the influence of exporting on innovation has far yet established especially in the empirical context of China. “Learning by exporting” research suggested that exporters have advantages in innovation as they have access to diverse overseas knowledge. Then what makes it difficult for Chinese exporters to learn innovation from exporting? Considering exporting as one mode of international diversification in firms’ product markets, this research plan to connect the “learning by exporting” literature with the recent research on how international diversification influence firms’ innovation. Taking a knowledge-based perspective and drawing on the learning theory and organizational diversity literature, this thesis argues that the inconsistent influence of exporting on innovation could be due to the confusion of three effects of international diversification, i.e. the positive effect of market variety (the extent to which a firm’s activities spread over many geographically defined markets), the negative effect of market separation (the dissimilarity between these different geographically defined markets), and the negative effect of market disparity (the inequality in the distribution of activities in different geographically defined markets). On the one hand, market variety provides firms with a better opportunity to build a diverse set of knowledge, the novel combinations of which giving rise to innovation. On the other hand, market separation and disparity tends to make substantial difficulties in knowledge transfer, sharing and integration. High external absorptive capacity may help firms acquire more knowledge from various markets, while high internal absorptive capacity may help firms overcome some difficulties in knowledge transfer, sharing and integration caused by market separation and market disparity. As an extension to the above logic line, this research also plan to explore how the innovation generated from exporting may influence the short term and long term economic return of exporting firms with complex moderating factors. Focusing China as the empirical context, the research plans to combine quantitative and qualitative method in the empirical strategy design, trying to build a cross-level conceptual framework to theorize the above arguments, and to explore the micro-foundation of firms’ learning from international diversification of their product markets.

随着中国经济转型步伐的加快，以往严重依赖劳动密集型低端制造业的出口企业迫切需要向创新型企业转变。“出口中学习”研究基于组织学习理论认为出口企业可以通过学习海外市场的先进知识和经验获得创新优势。然而大量实证研究发现中国出口企业的创新表现却不尽如人意。是什么阻碍了中国企业从出口中学习、提升创新能力的步伐？本研究立足于既有的“出口中学习”研究，采用国际多元化视角，将组织学习理论、知识基础观和微观多元化研究相结合，深入剖析三个不同维度的国际多元化概念和两个不同方面的知识吸收能力如何交互影响出口企业创新能力的发展。作为对出口企业创新战略研究的延伸，本研究还将讨论影响出口企业创新的经济回报的多重因素。借助新发展的理论工具，构建更综合的理论框架，依托近年新兴市场的实证背景，采用定性与定量相结合的跨层次研究设计，本研究将讨论机制、拓展理论，为企业出口战略和知识管理提出建议，为国家出口政策的制定提供参考。

出口是大多数新兴市场国家对外开放的最初级形式，海外客户是新兴市场企业最早接触的外国商业伙伴。长时间以来，人们对于发展中国家参与跨国贸易一直存在一个疑问，就是这究竟是否能够帮助这些国家的企业逐渐摆脱价值链底端的位置，最终建立独立的研发和品牌？那些成功了的中国企业如何是通过对外出口实现转型升级，逐渐沿产业链上行的？基于整合创新视角，本研究提出发展中国家企业是否能实现通过出口学习创新，取决于以下三个层面的因素。第一，目的地市场的多样性和目的地市场制度环境与母国的相似性。并不是出口越多越好，也不是向发达国家出口越多越好。出口强度适中、出口目的地多元化程度高、向制度环境类似的发展中国家出口的中国企业表现出了更强的创新能力，体现在更高强度的新产品销售额和更多的专利申请量。第二，母国本土的竞争环境（行业集中度和外资企业集中度）和制度设计（市场开放程度、中介组织发育程度和宏观科研投入）需要匹配。这些制度设计能够显著影响企业从出口中学习创新的效率。第三，企业本身吸收能力和的其他替代性学习途径是否存在。吸收能力强、缺乏替代性学习途径的企业能够从出口中获益更多。这些发现有助于理解为什么有些发展中国家企业能够通过改革开放实现转型升级，逐渐向价值链的高端延伸，而有些企业却陷于低端制造业不可自拔。对于企业的战略设计和国家的政策设计都有指导意义。.除了出口，对外直接投资也是学习创新知识的重要途径。在延伸性研究中，本研究团队还讨论了中资企业海外直接投资的行为模式，重点研究了研发国际化的进入模式。通过研究长达30年中国企业海外并购实践，我们发现中国本土的制度设计和国有产权模式确实会影响中国企业海外并购中对抗风险的策略选择。中国企业进行海外研发投资时有综合利用自身创新能力与政治资本的倾向。在注意到中国特色制度对企业的影响之后，本研究团队又做了一系列针对中国特色制度环境对企业行为和绩效影响的研究，陆续有论文发表。