Abstract
Drawing on the Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm theory, this research examines the manufacturing sector in Asia to determine whether constituents of intellectual capital (i.e. social, structural and human capital) and innovation capability (i.e. product and process innovation) are associated with firm performance differently, based on firms’ specific market orientation, i.e. export versus domestic orientation. Empirical findings suggest that product innovation and social capital show a positive association with performance of export-oriented firms in Asia. We conduct contextual analysis by dividing Asian manufacturing context into newly industrialized and emerging countries. Our results reveal that social capital has a positive association with export-oriented manufacturing firm performance in Asian emerging countries, whereas product innovation has a positive association with exporting manufacturing firms from Asian newly industrialized countries. Performance of domestic oriented firms is influenced more by process innovation and structural capital. Supplementary investigation showed that process innovation matter more to such firms in the newly industrialized Asian countries. On the other hand, structural capital has a greater effect on firms in emerging countries.