臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.30 NO.3

171 NTU Management Review Vol. 30 No. 3 Dec. 2020 The Relationships among Characteristics of Interlocking Directorate Network, Technological Diversity and Innovation Performance: Evidence from Taiwan’s Electronics Industry English Summary 1. Purpose/Objective In today’s fiercely competitive business environment, innovation is a key factor for maintaining the sustainable development of enterprises. To achieve the goal, diversification is one of the options that many companies choose to go for, and there is no exception for the technology industry. For the practitioners or researchers of technology industry, “technological diversity” is more related to innovation performance, and also an important issue either in practice or in related studies. Many scholars have pointed out that technological diversity helps enhance the innovation ability of companies (Miller, 2006; Garcia-Vega, 2006; Srivastava and Gnyawali, 2011; Wuyts and Dutta, 2014), generate benefits from the spillover effect (Jaffe, 1986), and improve “economies of scope” (Teece, 1980; Miller, 2006). According to Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), companies form a knowledge alliance to obtain externally-specific resources to generate revenues (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003). And from Class Hegemony Perspective, senior management has the power to control resources and make final decisions (Burt, 1980). Therefore, in the business organizations, the board of directors naturally play key roles in managing and obtaining resources. Specifically, in the condition of interlocking directorates, directors create social networks and through mutual interaction, offer channels to gain the needed knowledge for the companies they represent. (Yu and Chang, 2014; Phelps, 2010). Moreover, based on various social networks, companies will eventually acquire knowledge of different natures, which, undoubtedly, will affect the strategic planning of achieving technological diversity for the business organizations. Therefore, various social network characteristics become the key factors when companies are striving for developing technological diversity. In summary, this study first discusses the relationships among directors’ network characteristics, technological diversity, and innovation performance. We further examine Cheng-Jen Huang , Department of Accounting, National Chengchi University / Tunghai University Chao-Yuan Chang , Department of Accounting, Tunghai University