The Impact of the Absorptive Capacity and IT Usage on Firms' Innovation

This study is to analyze the impact of the absorptive capacity and information technology (IT) on firms' innovation. The absorptive capacity is measured by R&D investment intensity, R&D manpower concentration, and the firm's size. We try to see the interaction effects between the absorptive capacity and IT usage on firms' innovation. We also look into the differences of the impacts between manufacturing industry and service industry as well as IT industry and service industry. We found that IT and R&D intensity have stronger interaction effect on innovation in manufacturing industry than in service industry, which shows that IT plays a more important role in the accumulation of knowledge in R&D activity in manufacturing industry. Contrarily, in service industry, IT and R&D manpower concentration has significant interaction effects on innovation. This means that the role of IT in service industry is sharing knowledge and experiences among employees in service industry. The interaction effect between firm's size and IT has positive impact on innovation in manufacturing industry, while it has negative impact on innovation in service industry. Finally, we found that the interaction effect is statistically significant in non-IT industry, while it is not statistically significant in IT industry.��� ��������� 2010��� ������(���������������������)��� ������������ ��������������������� ��������� ������ ��������� ���������(NRF-327-2010-1-B00173)