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

The Relationships among Characteristics of Interlocking Directorate Network, Technological Diversity and Innovation Performance: Evidence from Taiwan’s Electronics Industry 174 4.1.2 This research only analyzes the social networks interwoven by various directors’ associations with the electronics industry in Taiwan. Future studies can extend to other types of social networks (e.g., the social networks for mid-level supervisors or frontline employees) and observe how different their impact levels can be. In addition, there is no distinction in the types of directors (such as legal person directors/individual directors/ independent directors). The above are the areas that can be discussed in more detail in the future. 4.1.3 The industry experience of board members may have different effects on the relationships among directors’ network characteristics, technological diversity, and innovation performance. Directors with management or with finance expertise may have different connections with, therefore different effects on different types of companies. This is another area that deserves further studies. 4.1.4 We limit ourselves to Taiwan’s electronics firms that file with the USPTO, but not every firm files the application, and if they do, filing with the USPTO is not the only choice. Researchers can examine different forms of innovation outputs to establish a more comprehensive analysis. Our empirical results do not support prior studies which stated that directors’ network density positively impacts innovation performance through the diversification of related technologies. Instead, these results indicate that in today’s highly competitive global business environment, Taiwan’s electronics industry is unable to obtain highly complex key knowledge and technology through the directors’ dense networks. To go further, network density actually weakens the value of technological diversity in the network. On the other hand, prior studies find that when network density is too broad, it is not conducive to innovation performance and corporate performance (e.g., Kim, 2005; Yu and Chang, 2014). Our analyses again prove these findings. Our analyses show that directors’ network sizes, network structural holes, and network centrality have significant and positive impacts on innovation performance via technological diversity. Therefore, this study argues that companies must enlarge themselves through the expansion of directors’ social networks, and encourage these directors to take on bridging or central roles in such networks so as to absorb and transmit