Motive, form and function of international R&D alliances: Evidence from the Chinese IT industry

Strategic alliance motivation for technology commercialization and product development

“…Firms have been found to prefer to take advantage of intangible asset transfers through adopted social interaction with their partners (Das and Teng 2000;Wu and Callahan 2005).…”

“…Moreover, firms maintain combinatory advantages of complementary resources, gravitating toward formal agreements to create new knowledge and share scientific output (Wu and Callahan 2005). Formal agreements can be taken in exchanged asset mechanisms, and enable behaviour and output of cooperation that serves an opportunity to access tangible assets of alliances to be measured (Zhongfeng et al 2009).…”

“…Expertise includes a highly educated workforce, skills, intelligence, and the expertise of individuals and of teams of people (Tsang 1998). Firms join alliances that offer sufficiently qualified scientists, engineers and technical staff to perform agreed cooperation projects (Li and Zhong 2003;Wu and Callahan 2005). For motivation concerning expertise, firms expect to gain advantages from the partner's know-how; technology's tacitness is based on experience, and transmitted by demonstration or observation, followed by assimilation by those seeking the knowledge (Khalil 2000).…”

Strategic partnering with Chinese companies: hidden motives and treasures

“…However, China's rapid economic growth has also fuelled government-led efforts to move the country into a next stage of development. In particular, since the mid 1980s, the Chinese government has strongly encouraged the inflow of foreign investment in R&D in order to enhance the technology capabilities of local firms (Wu and Callahan 2005) and consequently regarded multinational companies as the most important source of foreign R&D investment (Zhao & Sun, 2003). To ensure technology transfer to the domestic market, R&D investments became a prerequisite for the formation of Sino-foreign joint ventures, although technology collaborations mostly comprised simple equipment and rarely involved advanced R&D work (Walsh 2003).…”

“…Partly due to WTO-related reforms, foreign companies are no longer required to partner with local firms in order to invest in most high -tech industries (MOFTEC, 2000). Nevertheless, major 7 cities such as Beijing and Shanghai encourage the formation of international R&D alliances by offering preferential treatment policies (Wu and Callahan 2005). Wu and Callahan (2005) find that the rapid growth of foreign invested R&D centers and partnerships in China is mainly due to the country's accession to the WTO in 2001 and the associated foreign investment policies of China.…”