This study empirically examines the impact of top management’s entrepreneurship on innovation performance in small and medium-sized semiconductor manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on the mediating role of technological innovation capabili...
This study empirically examines the impact of top management’s entrepreneurship on innovation performance in small and medium-sized semiconductor manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on the mediating role of technological innovation capabilities and the moderating effect of absorptive capacity. Entrepreneurship is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct comprising proactiveness, innovativeness, and risk-taking, while technological innovation capabilities are decomposed into research and development capability, learning capability, and technology management capability. Absorptive capacity, defined as an organization’s ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit external knowledge and technology, is introduced as a moderating variable in the relationship between technological innovation capabilities and innovation performance.
For empirical analysis, survey data were collected from top management teams of domestic small and medium-sized semiconductor manufacturing firms, yielding a total of 280 valid responses. Frequency analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted using SPSS, while confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were performed using AMOS.
The results indicate that proactiveness and innovativeness have significant positive effects on all sub-dimensions of technological innovation capabilities, whereas risk-taking shows a partial effect limited to learning capability. All three dimensions of technological innovation capability—R&D capability, learning capability, and technology management capability—exert significant positive effects on innovation performance. Furthermore, technological innovation capability plays a critical mediating role in the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation performance. Specifically, proactiveness and innovativeness exhibit partial mediation effects, while risk-taking demonstrates a full mediation structure, suggesting that performance creation mechanisms differ across dimensions of entrepreneurship. In addition, absorptive capacity significantly strengthens the relationship between technological innovation capability and innovation performance, indicating that firms with stronger abilities to utilize external knowledge are more effective in converting technological capabilities into innovation outcomes.
By integratively analyzing the structural relationships among entrepreneurship, technological innovation capability, absorptive capacity, and innovation performance in semiconductor SMEs, this study extends existing research and provides meaningful theoretical implications for entrepreneurship and innovation studies.