Corporate motivation and performance in R&D alliances

Abstract

In the face of the global challenges of rapid transitions in technologies and markets, R&D activity has become one of the main ways for companies to engage in innovation. In addition, minimizing transaction cost is no longer sufficient to ensure a company's survival; therefore, companies must investigate and acquire resources to facilitate innovation within the organization. This study investigates corporate motivation and the performance of R&D alliances among machinery manufacturers in Taiwan. To explore the relationships between motivation and performance, this study adopts two distinct but complementary perspectives on R&D alliances: transaction-cost economics (TCE) and resource-based theory (RBT). This study includes the administration of a survey to explore the issues of motivation of companies participating in R&D alliances, types of governance structure in alliances, relationships between governance structure and performance, and relationships between motivation and performance of an R&D alliance in Taiwan's machinery industry (the TMI). The results in this study assert that corporate motivation as derived from both TCE and RBT perspectives has a significant positive relationship with the performance of R&D alliances; however, the other moderating variables, such as types of governance structure and corporate attributes, do not have a significant impact on the performance of R&D alliances in the TMI.