IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i22p12872-d684264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The U-Shaped Relationship between Intellectual Capital and Technological Innovation: A Perspective on Enterprise Ownership and the Moderating Effect of CSR

Author

Listed:
  • Zhenyang Zhang

    (Graduate School of Management of Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan 48547, Korea)

  • Xinyuan Wang

    (Graduate School of Management of Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan 48547, Korea
    School of Economics and Management, Hulunbuir University, Hulunbuir 021000, China)

  • Dongphil Chun

    (Graduate School of Management of Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan 48547, Korea)

Abstract

Promoting technological innovation is an essential issue for enterprises to maintain sustainable development in a highly competitive environment. Previous studies have focused on exploring the linear relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation, ignoring the possibility of a non-linear relationship between them. This study draws on a dualistic view of intellectual capital and divides it into two elements: human capital and structural capital. Based on the factor endowment theory, we explored the non-linear relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation, using the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2019 as the sample, and then analyzed the moderating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on their relationship. The results of the OLS regressions indicated a significant U-shaped relationship between intellectual capital and its elements on technological innovation. This means a “regressive” effect of low levels of intellectual capital on technological innovation and an “incremental” effect of high levels of intellectual capital on technological innovation. Improving CSR could positively enhance the U-shaped effect of intellectual capital on technological innovation. A further study found that the U-shaped effects of intellectual capital and human capital on technological innovation were still supported in state-owned and private enterprises. The U-shaped effect of structural capital on technological innovation was still supported in private enterprises but not in state-owned enterprises. This study explored the relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation from a unique perspective. It provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to appropriately fulfill their social responsibility and actively promote technological innovation.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhenyang Zhang & Xinyuan Wang & Dongphil Chun, 2021. "The U-Shaped Relationship between Intellectual Capital and Technological Innovation: A Perspective on Enterprise Ownership and the Moderating Effect of CSR," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-20, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12872-:d:684264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12872/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12872/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xueming Luo & Shuili Du, 2015. "Exploring the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm innovation," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 703-714, December.
    2. Bejinaru Ruxandra, 2017. "Knowledge strategies aiming to improve the intellectual capital of universities," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 12(3), pages 500-523, September.
    3. Leiter, Andrea M. & Parolini, Arno & Winner, Hannes, 2011. "Environmental regulation and investment: Evidence from European industry data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 759-770, February.
    4. Francesco Gangi & Dario Salerno & Antonio Meles & Lucia Michela Daniele, 2019. "Do Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance Influence Intellectual Capital Efficiency?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-25, March.
    5. Victor Chen & Jing Li & Daniel Shapiro & Xiaoxiang Zhang, 2014. "Ownership structure and innovation: An emerging market perspective," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 1-24, March.
    6. Kang, Qiang & Liu, Qiao & Qi, Rong, 2010. "The Sarbanes-Oxley act and corporate investment: A structural assessment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 291-305, May.
    7. Nile W. Hatch & Jeffrey H. Dyer, 2004. "Human capital and learning as a source of sustainable competitive advantage," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(12), pages 1155-1178, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Serdar Erişen, 2023. "An Empirical Study of the Technoparks in Turkey in Investigating the Challenges and Potential of Designing Intelligent Spaces," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-22, June.
    2. Jungeun Cho & Haeyoung Ryu, 2022. "Impact of Managerial Ownership on Corporate Social Responsibility in Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-14, April.
    3. Su Yi & Muhammad Rabnawaz & Waqar Jalal & Ali Zeb, 2023. "The Nexus between Foreign Competition and Buying Innovation: Evidence from China’s High-Technology Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-27, July.
    4. Md. Sohel Rana & Syed Zabid Hossain, 2023. "Intellectual Capital, Firm Performance, and Sustainable Growth: A Study on DSE-Listed Nonfinancial Companies in Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-23, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Yan & Wang, Junkai & Mu, Zi & Li, Lingxiao, 2023. "The impact of corporate environmental responsibility on green technological innovation: A nonlinear model including mediate effects and moderate effects," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 754-769.
    2. Xinyuan Wang & Zhenyang Zhang & Dongphil Chun, 2021. "The Influencing Mechanism of Internal Control Effectiveness on Technological Innovation: CSR as a Mediator," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-17, November.
    3. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    4. Chang-Yang Lee & Ji-Hwan Lee & Ajai S. Gaur, 2017. "Are large business groups conducive to industry innovation? The moderating role of technological appropriability," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 313-337, June.
    5. Şahan, Duygu & Tuna, Okan, 2018. "Environmental innovation of transportation sector in OECD countries," Chapters from the Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL), in: Kersten, Wolfgang & Blecker, Thorsten & Ringle, Christian M. (ed.), The Road to a Digitalized Supply Chain Management: Smart and Digital Solutions for Supply Chain Management. Proceedings of the Hamburg International C, volume 25, pages 157-170, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management.
    6. James Christopher Westland, 2020. "Predicting credit card fraud with Sarbanes‐Oxley assessments and Fama‐French risk factors," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 95-107, April.
    7. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.
    8. Liu, Duan & Yu, Nizhou & Wan, Hong, 2022. "Does water rights trading affect corporate investment? The role of resource allocation and risk mitigation channels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    9. Waters, James, 2015. "Optimal design and consequences of financial disclosure regulation: a real options approach," MPRA Paper 63369, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Qi‐an Chen & Shuxiang Tang & Yuan Xu, 2022. "Do government subsidies and financing constraints play a dominant role in the effect of state ownership on corporate innovation? Evidence from China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3698-3714, December.
    11. Johan Graafland, 2020. "Competition in technology and innovation, motivation crowding, and environmental policy," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 137-145, January.
    12. Guoli Chen & Sterling Huang & Philipp Meyer‐Doyle & Denisa Mindruta, 2021. "Generalist versus specialist CEOs and acquisitions: Two‐sided matching and the impact of CEO characteristics on firm outcomes," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1184-1214, June.
    13. Nils Grashof, 2020. "Sinking or swimming in the cluster labour pool? A firm-specific analysis of the effect of specialized labour," Jena Economics Research Papers 2020-006, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    14. Liu, Menghe & Li, Yuxiao, 2022. "Environmental regulation and green innovation: Evidence from China's carbon emissions trading policy," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    15. Ruxandra Bejinaru & Cristian Valentin Hapenciuc & Iulian Condratov & Pavel Stanciu, 2018. "The University Role in Developing the Human Capital for a Sustainable Bioeconomy," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 20(49), pages 583-583, August.
    16. Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés & Zhang, Min, 2020. "The cost of weak institutions for innovation in China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    17. Tammy L. Madsen & Michael J. Leiblein, 2015. "What Factors Affect the Persistence of an Innovation Advantage?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(8), pages 1097-1127, December.
    18. Vincenzo Scafarto & Federica Ricci & Elisabetta Magnaghi & Salvatore Ferri, 2021. "Board structure and intellectual capital efficiency: does the family firm status matter?," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 25(3), pages 841-878, September.
    19. Dolores Gallardo-Vázquez & Luis Enrique Valdez-Juárez & José Luis Lizcano-Álvarez, 2019. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Intellectual Capital: Sources of Competitiveness and Legitimacy in Organizations’ Management Practices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-29, October.
    20. Joseph Raffiee, 2017. "Employee Mobility and Interfirm Relationship Transfer: Evidence from the Mobility and Client Attachments of United States Federal Lobbyists, 1998–2014," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(10), pages 2019-2040, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12872-:d:684264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.