How Does Tie Strength Dispersion within Inter-Organizational Networks Affect Agricultural Technological Innovation? Evidence from China

Agricultural technology is key to ensuring food security. Innovation in agricultural technology plays a vital role in increasing national food production. Collaborative innovation has become an essential form of technological innovation in the new era. Although there has been a large body of literature exploring the influencing factors on technological innovation, how tie strength dispersion within inter-organizational networks affects agricultural technological innovation has not been systematically studied. In this research, we use a cooperative network to investigate how relational divisive faultlines caused by the uneven distribution of the strength of inter-organizational relationships affects agricultural technological innovation through the subgroup structure, and the moderating role of position embeddedness. This article uses the Derwent Innovations Index to select agricultural technology joint patent applications from 2000 to 2018 to build a cooperation network, and uses multiple linear regression to conduct an empirical analysis. The empirical results show that the relational divisive faultlines have a positive effect on the subgroup structure. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the subgroup structure and agricultural technological innovation. The initial stage of subgroup formation can transmit the information between the subgroups in time and promote the efficiency of agricultural technological innovation. However, as the degree of subgroup cohesion increases, the phenomenon of “in-group” and “out-of-group” will be formed, which will inhibit information exchange, having a negative impact on agricultural technological innovation. In addition, positional embeddedness has a significant positive moderating effect between relational divisive faultlines and agricultural technological innovation. This research provides a theoretical basis for understanding how the overall network relationship strength distribution affects technological innovation by exploring the micro-process of the structural changes of the cooperation network. Moreover, it has specific guiding significance for the organization to participation in a cooperation network to improve the efficiency of agricultural technological innovation.