Choosing Between Safeguards: Scope and Governance Decisions in R&D Alliances
研究企业在研发联盟中如何通过限制活动范围或选择股权治理结构来应对知识侵占风险，发现多伙伴和跨国联盟更倾向限制范围，而直接竞争者更倾向股权治理。
Research on transaction cost economics has emphasized the choice of an appropriate governance structure as an important mechanism in alleviating exchange hazards in interfirm transactions, yet firms may also manipulate the characteristics of a transaction to make it less hazardous in the first place by carefully selecting the activities or assets involved in the transaction. In this paper, we explore this theoretical issue in transaction cost economics by examining how firms design R&D alliances to mitigate appropriation hazards in these interfirm transactions. In particular, we investigate when firms will prefer to limit the scope of functional activities involved in an R&D alliance, thus addressing appropriation hazards directly by manipulating the alliance’s characteristics, versus when they will opt for an equity-based governance structure in order to mitigate appropriation hazards ex post. We argue that firms are more likely to limit the scope of alliance activities rather than choose an equity-based governance structure when there are multiple partners in an alliance and when the partners are from different nations, because monitoring and other control mechanisms become more cumbersome and problematic in these circumstances. In contrast, firms that are direct competitors are more likely to choose an equity-based governance structure in order to mitigate exchange hazards, such as knowledge misappropriation, through carefully monitored knowledge sharing. Empirical analysis of data on R&D alliances in a variety of industries provides support for our arguments regarding alliances involving multiple partners and alliances between competitors. We discuss the implications of our study for research on transaction cost economics.