The complex role of knowledge diversity in firm's collaborative innovation under inclusive culture

Collaboration innovation (CI) is increasingly becoming a crucial strategy for enterprises to enhance their technological capabilities. The knowledge base among members and collaborative environment significantly impact on the success of collaboration. However, existing research has overlooked exploration of inter-firm's knowledge diversity and inclusive culture. This study was developed information/decision-making theory and social categorization theory to investigate how knowledge diversity and inclusive culture affect firms' CI. This study collected 5126 annual observations from 712 listed companies in China's high-tech manufacturing industry between 2016 and 2023. Regression analysis through Stata 17.0 was used to test the conceptual model. By employing the fixed effects model, we found that: (1) knowledge variety (KV) positively impacts CI, while knowledge separation (KS) exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with CI; (2) KV positively influences collaborative innovation depth (CD) but does not significantly affect collaborative innovation breadth (CB), while KS exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with CD; (3) Inclusive culture primarily manifests in relation to KS, which positively moderates the effect of KS on CD. This exploration of when and how the KS promotes or inhibits CI broadens the understanding of the consequences of KS in an inter-firm perspective.