Licensing Foreign Technology and the Moderating Role of Local R&D Collaboration: Extending the Relational View

Abstract

The relational resource-based view posits that performance differences among firms can be explained not only by the possession of internal resources but also by maintaining and developing relationships with external partners. However, studies in the extant literature usually address the separated roles of various external relationships of focal firms, but the literature has not addressed how relationships with different sets of knowledge partners are related to each other and influence focal firms' performance. Therefore, to fill this research gap, this study focuses on how technological resources acquired from one set of partners (licensing foreign technologies) may generate subsequent internal and relational rents in terms of technological innovation in the context of collaboration with an entirely different set of knowledge partners (local R&D partners). Specifically, we propose that local R&D collaborations need to be large in scale and broad in scope. The empirics are based on the analysis of a sample of 160 high-tech Chinese firms observed from 2000 to 2011. Consistent with our predictions, our findings contribute to extending the relational view by addressing the relations among the relationships of focal firms.

Effects of University–Industry Collaboration on Technological Newness of Firms

“…To investigate the diversity of the collaboration, this study draws on the Herfindahl‐Hirschman‐Index (HHI), a common measure for the degree of concentration and uses the modified HHI as a measure of the degree of diversity. Hence, the value of the collaboration diversity variable spans a range of 0 to .99, where 0 indicates maximum concentration on a specific knowledge field and larger values indicate a broader diversity if several scientific areas are included in the collaboration portfolio (Lin and Chang, ; Wang and Li‐Ying, ). Specifically, the Web of Science research category for each joint paper is applied to calculate the diversity of research categories over all papers in a 5‐year period per company.…”

Linking forms of inbound open innovation to a driver-based typology of environmental innovation: Evidence from French manufacturing firms

“…Compared with arm's-length market exchanges, external R&D requires more relationship-specific assets and implies some knowledge sharing between the focal firm and the organization that conducts the external R&D. Research shows that external R&D is beneficial only if it exhibits some complementarity with the focal firm's internal knowledge (Cassiman and Veugelers, 2006). Third, R&D cooperation might take the form of joint ventures, equity (minority holding) or non-equity alliances between firms, or agreements with universities and research institutes (Wang and Li-Ying, 2015). It demands a high level of relationship-specific assets, knowledge sharing, and complementarity, and it invokes high coordination costs (Brockhoff, 1992).…”

“…In well-developed technology markets, firms can acquire external technologies through the purchase or licensing of patents, based on which they innovate further (Li-Ying and Wang, 2015;Li-Ying et al, 2013). A licensor may provide some licensees with technical know-how, but coordination remains limited.…”

How Knowledge Acquisition Diversity Affects Innovation Performance during the Technological Catch-Up in Emerging Economies: A Moderated Inverse U-Shape Relationship

“…As a consequence, domestic enterprises may access a wide spectrum of technology sourcing channels to enhance accessibility to a broader pool of existing knowledge stock [14], thereby allowing domestic enterprises to create new combinations of technology and knowledge [15]. Although a few studies have clearly pointed to the portfolio aspects of technology sourcing channels [7], most of those studies focus on the relative contribution of these channels [2,8,16] or the interaction of several sourcing channels to technological advance [6,7,10]. Much less attention has been paid to the effect of various technology sourcing channels at a portfolio level and investigates the effect of the portfolio of technology sourcing channels (referred to as "knowledge acquisition diversity") on the innovation performance of domestic enterprises in emerging countries [17][18][19].The second rationale for sourcing knowledge externally is to capture the abundance of existing knowledge stock.…”