Inter-firm Collaboration Research Articles

Transformation from Industries towards Ecosystems: How Behemoths Approach Ecosystem Thinking

Business ecosystems, an increasingly relevant means of inter-firm collaboration, have recently received great momentum among academics and practitioners alike. Already a decade ago, strategy schola...

Learning by Doing and Corporate Development Activities

We examine how learning-by-doing rates affect firms’ choice of organizational governance and the content of interfirm collaborations in their corporate development activities. Transacting firms fac...

Life below excellence: exploring the links between top-ranked universities and regional competitiveness

ABSTRACT This paper examines interactions between the presence of top-ranked universities and other conditions that encourage regional competitiveness. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was conducted to assess the combined effect of the conditions. The analysis yields several noteworthy conclusions. First, no single condition is necessary for a region to be competitive. Second, R&D expenditure is important for regional competitiveness. Third, different configurations of conditions are sufficient for high competitiveness in different regional clusters. Furthermore, some of these configurations do not include the presence of top-ranked universities. A ‘magic recipe’ consists of the combination of a private research system, an inter-firm collaboration network and high levels of human capital. The analysis shows that university excellence is valuable. However, in terms of its contribution to regional development, it is not crucial and must always be contextualised. This conclusion is important for smart strategic planning of local knowledge systems.

Why do some SMEs engage in joint internationalisation and others do not? Exploring the role of mental images in collective international opportunity recognition

This study explores the under-researched yet increasingly important process of collective international opportunity recognition. Collective opportunities are created through the interaction and joint acts of several firms and, thus, involve a complex merging of different perspectives and interests. This study analyses why some entrepreneurs recognise collective opportunities in foreign markets while others do not. The empirical data comprise qualitative interviews with 20 representatives of Finnish small- and medium-sized maritime enterprises that are exploring internationalisation opportunities in Norway and Russia. The study suggests that collective international opportunity recognition is affected by the entrepreneur’s mental images of inter-firm collaboration and the foreign market. These images comprise his or her interpretations of relevant experiences, the current strategies and resources, and attractiveness of the context. Mental images are built on information and stimuli that the entrepreneur receives regarding potential partner firms and the foreign market, although these inputs are interpreted through the current images. The study advances international entrepreneurship research by providing insights into the subjective and contextual process of collective international opportunity recognition from the perspective of individual entrepreneurs, exploring mental images as drivers in this process, and describing the content of these images. The study highlights the complexities involved in opportunity recognition in an international collaborative setting.

Cultural factors of network inter-firm cooperation

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to specify cultural properties that influence inter-firm cooperation, advancing a conventional theoretical economic-based framework.Design/methodology/approachAn evaluation of concepts related to parametric cultural assessment was the theoretical foundation for structural aspects of inter-firm collaboration, documented in an empirical study that investigates cross-cultural analysis. This study was based on research at a cross-national level, allowing cultural disparities to be captured. Therefore, the empirical basis was the sixth World Values Survey, which is the largest cross-national project for assessment of cultural values.FindingsIt was found that cultural properties, as freedom of choice; advancement of norms for equal dissemination of power; low perceived uncertainty; strategic orientation on the future; and spread norms of humanistic orientation would further develop inter-firm cooperation.Practical implicationsThe current study specifies a systematic and practical definition of attributes in the culture of inter-firm collaboration. Advantages of such advanced frameworks are more sustainable collaboration models, decreased expenses of inter-firm coordination methods and possibilities for establishing network knowledge among collaborating firms – a necessity for competitive advantage in today’s global economy.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research has been undertaken that specifies cultural properties influencing inter-firm cooperation, advancing a conventional theoretical economic-based framework.

WHAT DRIVES ENTERPRISE PRODUCT INNOVATION? ASSESSING HOW REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL INTER-FIRM COLLABORATION COMPLEMENT OR SUBSTITUTE FOR R&D INVESTMENTS

We study whether regional, national, and international inter-firm collaboration complement or substitute for enterprise R&D investments as drivers of product innovation. Analysing a large-scale dataset of 6,584 Norwegian enterprises, we find that for enterprises without R&D investments, regional collaboration, in particular, has a positive innovation effect. Unsurprisingly, R&D investments also have a positive innovation effect, but more interestingly; for enterprises with R&D investments, international collaboration has an additive effect, whereas regional and national collaboration have no effect. The findings imply that regional collaboration, in particular, substitutes for enterprise R&D investments as a driver of product innovation, whereas international collaboration has an additive and complementary effect. We moreover find that in particular enterprises with R&D investments, but without international collaboration, are more innovative the smaller they are. Conversely, enterprises with R&D investments have a stronger innovation effect from international collaboration the larger they are.

Governing day-to-day interactions in the execution phase of an interfirm collaboration

PurposeThis paper aims to advance understanding of the role of informal controls for governing day-to-day interactions in the execution phase of interfirm collaborations. It explores the nature of these informal controls and how they are used by the firm’s partners during this phase.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth case study of a lateral relationship between a car manufacturer and its suppliers, based on interviews, observations and archival material, and using concepts from the field of psychology.FindingsThe results reveal an interfirm collaboration in which the supplier, in particular, relies on so-called informal interpersonal controls for micro-contracting and solving the control problems of its day-to-day interactions. Specifically, the study finds that the collaboration partners rely on interpersonal influence tactics for influencing behavior, coordinating the activities of the collaboration partners, and mitigating collaborative risks. Depending on the specific individual, in terms of, for example, their “mood”, and the contingencies of the explicit interaction, such as contradicting flanking contractual agreements, the actors engage in different activities, including ingratiation, pressure or rational persuasion.Originality/valueThis study illuminates the role of informal controls in interfirm settings by distinguishing analytically between interpersonal and interorganizational informal controls. By mobilizing the psychological concepts of interpersonal influence tactics, the extant research in this field is complemented through the illustration of how the actors use informal control mechanisms, depending on their corresponding counterpart, and the specific situation of the interaction. The findings thereby highlight the situated nature of governance, suggesting that governance between collaboration partners is not a static condition, rather an ongoing process in which the actors use, and alternate between, distinct tactics in their daily interactions.

Greater adaptivity or greater control? Adaptation of IOR portfolios in response to technological change

This paper addresses the question of how firms accomplish the strategic task of adapting their entire set of IORs (interorganizational relationships) to changing environmental conditions. To study this, we move beyond the focus on collaboration with individual partners (the dyadic perspective) that has been the dominant emphasis in the literature until now. Instead, we view the firms’ portfolios through the lens of the different modes of IOR engaged in (licensing agreements, non-equity alliances, venture capital investments, minority investments, joint ventures, and mergers & and acquisitions). We study the role of environmental change within the high-tech setting of the bio-pharmaceutical industry and distinguish between industry technological change and firm-specific technological change. In doing so, we rely on prospect theory to theorize how firms’ perceptions of environmental change in terms of a looming loss or a potential gain affect their risk-bearing, how this leads them to adjust their IOR portfolio diversity, and how these adjustments get implemented at the mode level. Whereas most of our hypotheses were confirmed by the study, a key unexpected finding was that firms respond to both types of technological change through stronger forms of adaptation than theoretically anticipated. Firms adapt to industry technological change through an increase in the diversity of their portfolio of IORs and by churning it up, which leads to a loosening of control at the individual mode level but greater adaptivity at the portfolio level. When facing firm-specific change instead, they adapt by reducing portfolio diversity, while cutting back on collaboration across five out of the six modes. Our findings both contribute to the literature on organizational adaptation, interfirm collaboration, and IOR portfolios and provide a greater behavioral understanding of network change.

Technological learning in inter-firm collaborations: a review and research agenda

Based on the rapid pace of technological changes in the present era, many organisations have come to the conclusion that they have no choice other than cooperating with each other in order to gain knowledge. Technological learning in inter-firm collaboration has turned into a necessity for many organisations. However, organisations have a rudimentary knowledge about its process and the way it materialises. In this review, in order to understand the process of technological learning better, papers with the following characteristics are searched for: 1) they should discuss the process of technological learning; 2) they should have inter-firm collaboration as the level of analysis for their models. As a result, six models were found which are investigated here. First, each of the models is introduced. Then, the level and the definition of technological learning are discussed based on the model. Different models approximately imply the same definition of inter-firm technological learning, however, the level of technological learning in them is different. This review highlights directions for future research with the aim of advancing the literature on inter-firm technological learning.

Technological learning in inter-firm collaborations: a review and research agenda

Technological learning in inter-firm collaborations: a review and research agenda

Interfirm Collaboration Cluster as Source of Competitiveness to Enhance Performance

Cluster is one of the competitive advantages for small business in Indonesia. This study examines the role of interfirm collaboration clusters and product competitiveness on small business performance. The sample used in this study were 317 owners or managers of furniture business in Central Java, Indonesia. The analysis used is structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of this study indicate the important role of interfirm collaboration clusters on product innovation and Small business performance. Other research results indicate that customer centricity has an effect on product innovation. This research also contributes both theoretically and managerially.

Localization of collaborations in knowledge creation

This study investigates the localization of collaboration in knowledge creation by using data on Japanese patent applications. Applying distance-based methods, we obtained the following results. First, collaborations are significantly localized at the 5% level with a localization range of approximately 100 km. Second, the localization of collaboration is observed in most technologies. Third, the extent of localization was stable from 1986 to 2005 despite extensive developments in information and communications technology that facilitate communication between remote organizations. Fourth, the extent of localization is substantially greater in inter-firm collaborations than in intra-firm collaborations. Furthermore, in inter-firm collaborations, the extent of localization is greater in collaborations with small firms. This result suggests that geographic proximity mitigates the firm-border effects on collaborations, especially for small firms.

Determinants of Innovation Cooperation Performance: What Do We Know and What Should We Know?

The involvement of firms in innovation cooperation with different partners has become a widespread phenomenon in the contemporary business landscape. Our paper provides a review of extant alliance, innovation, open innovation and inter-firm collaboration literature and organizes it based on a conceptual framework featuring three levels of analysis: (a) the dyadic level, (b) the network level, and (c) the location level. The article identifies roadmaps in each of these areas and also highlights existing gaps in the present understanding of innovation cooperation. Thereby, it outlines a research agenda by identifying key research questions and issues in the areas where further research is needed and encouraged.

What constitutes successful African enterprises? A survey of performance variations in 210 African food processors

PurposeTo understand African small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance and its antecedents is essential, both from a strategic management and an industrial development perspective. While a substantial literature on African SMEs has emerged in recent years, studies of their performance specifically are few and inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to address this lacuna in the literature by examining variations in performance of 210 East African SMEs.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs OLS and logistic regression and Classify k-means test to analyze performance variations in a unique data set of 210 food processing enterprises in Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia.FindingsThree generic types of African SMEs are identified based on performance: laggards, followers and gazelles. The gazelles are typically medium-sized, skill-intensive companies selling relatively differentiated products in niche markets. The laggards are typically small, capital-intensive companies involved in grain milling that adopt a cost differentiation strategy. A key driver of variation in performance is found to be the quality of the external business environment (in particular the quality of intermediary markets), and also capability factors such as the strength of management. Strategy factors such as differentiation and political strategies explain performance variations.Practical implicationsAmong the policy implications are that African industrial policy should focus on improving the functioning of intermediary markets, e.g. by reducing the transaction costs of inter-firm collaboration. Moreover, rather than focusing industrial policy on SMEs per se, policymakers should focus on those types of enterprises that are capable of generating high performance, e.g. skill-intensive enterprises with strong managerial capabilities, engaged in differentiation strategies.Originality/valueThe paper integrates the extant literature on African SME performance, develops an analytical framework for studying it and presents novel empirical insights based on one of the most detailed surveys of SME performance in the continent to date. The findings have important and tangible implications for literature, as well as for industrial policy.

Boundary spanner relational behavior and inter-organizational control in supply chain relationships

Boundary spanner relational behavior is considered critical in the successful management of buyer–supplier relationships and may help avoiding high costs of more formal inter-organizational controls. Yet, the influence of partners' boundary spanners on effective supply chain collaboration has had much less inquiry than the influence of broader inter-organizational controls. We use survey data of 200 buyer–supplier relationships to examine how these individual and organizational control mechanisms influence the performance effects of interfirm collaborations that vary in scope of activities undertaken. Findings show that collaboration scope as well as boundary spanner relational behavior and inter-organizational controls are positively associated with performance. The effect of collaboration scope on firm performance, however, also depends on both mechanisms but in opposite directions: while its influence on performance is enhanced by inter-organizational controls, relational behavior of partners' boundary spanners has a negative moderating effect, indicating that such behavior contributes more to the effective management of collaborations of narrow scope than those of broader scope.

Downstream Demand Inference in decentralized supply chains

For many years, the main objective of studying decentralized supply chains was to demonstrate that a better inter-firm collaboration could lead to a better overall performance of the system. The literature has demonstrated that collaborating by sharing information, even in a partial way, can lead to near-optimal solutions. In this context, many researchers have studied a phenomenon called Downstream Demand Inference (DDI), which presents an effective demand management strategy to deal with forecast problems. DDI allows the upstream actor to infer the demand received by the downstream actor without the need of information sharing. Recent research showed that DDI is possible with Simple Moving Average (SMA) forecast method, and was verified for an autoregressive [AR(1)] demand process, a moving average [MA(1)] demand process, and an autoregressive moving average [ARMA(1, 1)] demand process. In this paper, we extend the strategy's results by considering causal invertible [ARMA(p, q)] demand processes. We develop Mean Squared Error and Average Inventory level expressions for [ARMA(p, q)] demand under DDI strategy, No Information Sharing (NIS) and Forecast Information Sharing (FIS) strategies. We compute the Bullwhip effect generated by employing SMA method and we simulate the resulted improvement compared to employing MMSE method. We analyze the sensibility of the three performance metrics in respect with lead-time value, SMA and ARMA(p, q) parameters. We compare DDI results with NIS and FIS strategies’ results and we show experimentally that DDI generally outperforms NIS. Finally, we provide a revenue sharing contract as a practical recommendation to incite supply chain managers to adopt DDI strategy.

What makes industry\u2013university collaboration succeed? A systematic review of the literature

Industry–university collaborations (IUCs) have received increased attention in management practice and research. The need for innovation in today’s business environment and the ambition of policymakers to commercialize academic knowledge intensify this trend. However, although research has devoted considerable effort to finding the determinants of success for interfirm collaboration, much less is known about IUCs. This article presents the results of a systematic review of the literature on the collaboration between industry and universities. We perform an extensive analysis of research published on industry–university collaboration projects with the objective of distilling factors that influence the success of such collaborations. We propose a novel conceptual model, which synthesizes our empirical results, and use it to organize and categorize influencing factors and their interrelationship within the collaboration process. Based on our review of existing literature, we identify an agenda for future research in this domain.

Organisational ambidexterity in UK high-tech SMEs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of organisational ambidexterity, and identify drivers of and barriers to ambidexterity in the high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, using fine-grained qualitative evidence. This is much needed to generate insights on how organisational ambidexterity actually takes place in SMEs.Design/methodology/approachThis study is exploratory in nature, based on qualitative in-depth interview data collected from 20 UK high-tech SMEs in five industries.FindingsThe results reveal that SMEs leverage resources through intra-firm and inter-firm collaborations to pursue ambidexterity sequentially or simultaneously, using a range of drivers and overcoming a range of barriers.Research limitations/implicationsThe data were gathered from a single informant from each firm. Therefore, more in-depth, longitudinal, qualitative research using multiple sources of data may be required to develop deeper insights into ambidexterity.Practical implicationsManagers of high-tech SMEs need to focus on specific barriers to ambidexterity and devise effective mechanisms to promote the drivers of ambidexterity. The mechanisms to achieve ambidexterity as identified in this study will benefit high-tech SMEs in particular, and firms in general.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the understanding of organisational ambidexterity in high-tech SMEs by exploring the mechanisms through which SMEs implement organisational ambidexterity despite their resource constraints. This counteracts the conventional view that it is difficult for SMEs to pursue ambidexterity.

Knowledge transfer in the emerging solar energy sector in Ghana

ABSTRACTThis study reports the results of an exploratory qualitative investigation into knowledge transfer processes within the solar energy industry in Ghana. Our main thesis is that the development of a new economic sector requires diffusion of new technology and knowledge, most often through cross-border inter-firm collaborations. We interviewed 12 solar energy firms operating in the country and 12 users of solar energy. The data were analysed using Tables and statements from the respondents. The results reveal that an increasing number of firms are entering the industry to take advantage of the growing demand for solar energy. There is also a general eagerness among individuals and firms to acquire skills and knowledge, mainly from foreign firms and inter-firm knowledge transfers appear to be facilitated by social ties. However, the degree of inter-firm mobility of workers is currently limited and efforts are not made at aggregate industry level to generate and disseminate knowledge.

Political battlefields: how within-firm goal conflict influences between-firm collaboration

In this paper, we inductively explore how within-firm goal conflict influences inter-firm collaboration over time. Based on our findings, we challenge current theorizing on collaborative dynamics in inter-organizational relationships, positioning firms as polilithic entities, where within-firm goal conflict can spur complex and unexpected between-firm collaborative processes and outcomes.