Striving Towards R&D Collaboration Performance: The Effect of Asymmetry, Trust and Contracting

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of trust, asymmetry and contracting in R&D collaboration. At best, asymmetry brings major benefits to collaborating firms, but it may also become the basis of dissimilar orientation towards informal and formal governance methods, which makes managing the collaboration and reaching goals more complex. These issues are studied among 87 small Finnish ICT firms and the findings indicate that drawing overly straight generalizations on the roles of trust, contracting and asymmetry in R&D collaboration is risky. They all are closely bound together, affect each other differently, and have multiple dimensions.

Trust relationships within R&D networks: A case study from the biotechnological industry

“…Only a small number of studies have explored the impact of trust among manufacturers in an R&D network (Aulakh, Kotabe, & Sahay, 1996;Dyer & Chu, 2003;Hurmelinna, Blomqvist, Puumalainen, & Saarenketo, 2005;Lane, Salk, & Lyles, 2001;Zaheer, McEvilly, & Perrone, 1998), and few studies focus on the factors that aff ect trust among manufacturers, the nature of which shapes manufacturers' cooperation. 2 On this basis, this paper utilizes transaction cost theory and social exchange theory to securitize trust among biotechnology manufacturers by exploring the infl uential factor of trust and how they aff ect trust in an R&D network.…”

Interorganizational learning for R&D consortium performance: a social capital perspective

“…Organizations engage increasingly in codeveloping original and competitive technological knowledge through research and development (R&D) consortia opening their boundaries concerning research activities to achieve a collaborative advantage in cooperation with external parties (Belderbos et al , 2018). While extant research considers that the success of R&D consortia is a matter of collectively discerning, refining, assimilating and generating knowledge-based assets across partners (Czarnitzki et al , 2007; Hurmelinna et al , 2005; Lin et al , 2012; Steensma, 1996 Nishimura and Okamuro,2018), orchestrating such diverse interorganizational initiatives for the value cocreation still remains a practical challenge (Omidvar et al , 2017). Against this issue, scholars deliberate the importance of interorganizational learning (IOL) elucidating a systematic combination of the partners’ collective learning initiatives (Bruneel et al , 2010; Kim et al , 2012; Mariotti, 2012; Rajala, 2018; Schildt et al , 2012).…”

How Can the Governance of the French Clusters (Pôles de Compétitivité) Improve SME’s Competitiveness?

“…trust) and formal safeguards (e.g. contracting) is challenging (Hurmelinna et al, 2005). Unlike SMEs in biotech clusters where patent is a widespread source of knowledge protection, the majority of SMEs tend to deal with tacit knowledge (Olander et al, 2011).…”