Market or Relationship Dependency? The Effect of Alliance Partner Selection Orientation on Technology Innovation

Deng Yu

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 38, Issue 05, pp. 18 - 31,43 (2016)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2016.05.002

Abstract

Alliance partner selection has important theory and practice significance to the realization of firm alliance strategy target. Market-focus and relationship-focus partner selection has different effects on the improvement of technology innovation of focus enterprises. On the theory basis of alliance strategy,knowledge integration and technology innovation,this paper establishes the theoretical model and empirically tests the relationship between alliance partner selection and technology innovation,by using the data collected from 123 high-tech companies. The results suggest that alliance partner selection strategy positively affects technology innovation, but different alliance partner selection strategies have different effects on technology innovation with different types. Market-focus partner selection mainly promotes breakthrough innovation and relationship-focus partner selection mainly advances incremental innovation. Dual knowledge integration plays a mediation role in the relationship between alliance partner selection and technology innovation. Commentary knowledge integration is an intermediary variable between market-focus alliance partner selection and breakthrough innovation, and auxiliary knowledge integration is an intermediary variable between relationship-focus partner selection and incremental innovation.

Keywords

alliance partner selection; knowledge integration; breakthrough innovation; incremental innovation