تنوع نمونه کارها اتحادیه، نوآوری بنیادین و تدریجی: نقش تعدیل کننده مدیریت تکنولوژی

In this paper we test whether the use of a set of technology management tools (TM-tools), a specification of alliance portfolio capability, influences the relationship between alliance portfolio diversity and a firm's innovation outcomes. With this model, we add to the theoretical literature on the performance effects of alliance portfolio diversity and specific contingencies allowing to appropriate benefits from this diversity. Based on a sample of South African firms, we first confirm the inverted U-shaped relation between alliance portfolio diversity and a firm's innovation outcomes found by earlier research. We also show that the shape of this inverted-U differs for incremental and radical innovation outcomes. Subsequently, we test the moderating effect of the use of TM-tools on this relationship, for which find a strong positive moderating effect. In particular, for firms intensively using TM-tools, the negative effect of high levels of alliance portfolio diversity on innovation outcomes turns into a positive effect. This suggests that the use of formal technology management practices is beneficial to manage highly diverse alliance portfolios.

One of the latest sprouts of the alliance literature focuses on portfolios of alliances (Wassmer, 2010), which are commonly defined as sets of alliances, thus concerning ego-networks including firms' direct inter-organizational ties with alters. It is shown that the prevalence of alliance portfolios is increasing over time (Lavie, 2009) and that the characteristics of portfolios, such as their diversity, impact a firm's innovation outcomes above and beyond what can be expected by the presence of the sum of individual alliances (Faems et al., 2005 and Phelps, 2010). Alliance portfolio diversity is a multi-dimensional construct and can be generally defined as the distribution of differences in partners’ characteristics. Previous research has shown that many of the dimensions of alliance portfolio diversity significantly affect various firms’ outcomes. Yamakawa et al. (2011), for instance, find that a high proportion of exploitative ties in an alliance portfolio, which is a form of functional diversity, has a negative return on assets effect. Jiang et al. (2010) report that alliance portfolios with greater organizational and functional diversity and lower governance diversity were associated with higher net profit, whereas partner diversity has a non-linear relationship with this specific firm outcome. Lavie and Miller (2008) present a sigmoid relationship between alliance portfolio diversity in terms of internationalization (including geographical diversity of partners) and financial performance of firms. This study focuses on the relationship between a specific dimension of alliance portfolio diversity, namely, alliance portfolio partner diversity (hereafter APPD), and firms’ innovation outcomes. The latter is defined as the proportion of sales from products or services that were technologically improved versions of existing ones (incremental) or were technologically new to the market (radical). The alliances taken into account are technological collaborations with a wide range of external partners (e.g., buyers, suppliers, universities, research labs) possessing different types of knowledge, which defines the concept of APPD. In these alliances, partner firms actively work together on the development of technologically new or strongly improved products, processes and services. Recent empirical studies on the relationship between APPD and innovation and other knowledge related outcomes converge to a similar conclusion; there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the two (Duysters and Lokshin, 2011, Laursen and Salter, 2006 and Vasudeva and Anand, 2011). An exception is a study by Wuyts and Dutta (in press), who report that alliance portfolio diversity and superior innovation performance are U-shaped related, which is according to them probably due to the benefits of both a focus and a diversity strategy in the particular industry under study (pharmaceuticals). These predominantly focus on innovation outcomes as a single construct, whereas there is reason to assume that the effects of alliance partner diversity on incremental and radical innovation outcomes differ, for example because incremental and radical innovation may require different type, depth and variety of knowledge. The configuration of alliance partner portfolios may thus be more suitable for one of the innovation types, but not for both. In this study, we argue that the performance impact from alliance portfolio partner diversity tends to be higher for incremental innovations in comparison to more radical innovations due to the fact the former innovations are more technological proximate to existing products, predictable and less risky (Yamakawa et al., 2011), which implies that it is relatively easier to be successful in the market with this type of innovations. By addressing these performance differentials we fill a gap in the alliance portfolio literature. The most important gap in the literature regarding APDD and innovative outcomes, however, is the lack of insights into whether managers can influence this relation through conscious and targeted managerial effort. It has been recognized that not all organizations benefit to the same extent from alliance portfolio partner diversity, resulting in several scholars calling for a contingency perspective (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010 and Wassmer, 2010). In this regard, a recent literature review on alliance management (Kale and Singh, 2009) concluded that a vast majority of scholarly work has focused on the management of single inter-organizational relationships. The same study observed that alliance portfolios bring new managerial challenges (Hoffman, 2007 and Hoffman, 2005). First, an organization needs to assess to what extent the composition of its alliance portfolio is in fit with its strategic needs. Second, while building its portfolio, it has to deal with competition that might grow between individual partners in the portfolio. Third, it has to ensure that the synergetic benefits that accrue from complementary alliances in its portfolio are actually reaped by the firm (Kale and Singh, 2009: 57). In particular, managerial action becomes relevant when an organization collaborates on technological matters with a diverse set of alliance partners. In the light of the above, this study puts forward the notion that the negative performance effects of high diversity levels can be positively influenced by focused managerial effort in the form of technology management. Technology management is defined as the capability to stimulate the effective use of technical knowledge and skills to develop new products and processes, the improvement of existing technology, and the generation of new knowledge and skills, and is a specification of what Sarkar et al. (2009) label as alliance portfolio coordination because it helps in identifying, selecting and combining relevant technologies in the hands of a diverse set of external actors, with whom the focal firm has technological collaborations (Phaal et al., 2001). Therefore, we put forward the following research question: What is the effect of alliance portfolio partner diversity on a firm's innovation outcomes, and what is the effect of the use of TM-tools on this relationship? Answering this research question will contribute to the literature in several distinct ways. First and foremost, we contribute to alliance portfolio (management) literature by showing that the negative effects of high levels of APPD on innovation outcomes can be counteracted by conscious and focused managerial efforts. Preceding studies predominantly focus on the development of capabilities and management functions aiming for the improvement of the functioning of individual alliances, but say relatively little about which managerial interventions innovating firms put in place to coordinate and profit from externally acquired knowledge and information acquired from a portfolio of inter-organizational ties. Second, we propose, and empirically find, differing effects of APPD on radical and incremental innovation. Third, we contribute to increasing the generalizability of empirical findings in alliance portfolio diversity literature by studying the performance effects of alliance portfolios of firms in a non-western context, that is, in South Africa for a wide range of industries and size classes.

From the findings presented in Section 4, we derive several contributions. First, we contribute to the alliance portfolio management literature by showing that the use of TM-tools, focusing on the identification and selection of external technological knowledge, strongly impacts on the relationship between APPD and a firm's innovation outcomes. Previous alliance portfolio management literature has shown that it is beneficial for organizations to have an alliance function and/or a dedicated alliance manager (Draulans et al., 2003, Kale et al., 2002 and Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler, 2004) but basically black-boxed the focused actions that alliance managers or functions undertake. Our study opens up this black box and point at the importance of organized, specific, and directed managerial action and the formalization of technology management for benefiting from a high level of alliance partner portfolio diversity. Our findings are in line with results reported in the latest best practice study by the Product Development & Management Association, in which it is reported that firms with the highest innovation outcomes use a high number of formal tools simultaneously (Barczak et al., 2009). The finding is also somewhat counter-intuitive, however, as scholars argue that high levels of formalization are negatively related to technological creativity, innovation and knowledge production (Lee and Choi, 2003), which signals that high levels of formalization are detrimental to innovation. It might be that the object of formalization plays a crucial role in this regard. For example, formalization directed at outcomes might have negative effects, whereas formalization of behavioral aspects (e.g., identification and selection) might improve or speed up the creation of innovations (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997). Second, on a more general level, our study also shows that agency of organizations is highly important in inter-organizational settings. We show that the effect of the composition of a firm's alliance portfolio on its performance is not set in stone but can be altered by conscious managerial actions. We hereby contribute to the inter-organizational network literature which often ignores the fact that firms differ in the actions that they take and the capabilities that they have, and that they might therefore benefit differently from being in comparable network environments. By showing that organizational action, in the form of engaging in TM-tool use, can turn a negative effect of APPD into a positive effect, we have clearly shown that agency is at the core of understanding the benefits firms derive from their networks. Third, this study adds to the generalizability of the relation between alliance portfolio diversity and innovation outcomes. Our findings show that also in a non-Western, across-industry and non-high-tech context there is strong evidence for the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relation with differing effects for incremental and radical innovation outcomes. As such, our findings show that the theoretical arguments underlying this hypothesis are also valid outside of the contexts in which they had so far been tested. Moreover, two important managerial implications can be derived from this study. Essentially our study informs managers whether they should deploy TM-tools and, if they should, what specific types of managerial actions are most beneficial to undertake. With regard to the former, firms should carefully monitor the partner diversity of their alliance portfolio in order to make informed decisions regarding the deployment of TM-tools. As long as a firm maintains relatively low levels of APPD, the deployment of TM-tools does not add much to a firm's innovative performance. As such, firms at those levels of APPD should refrain from investing heavily in the deployment of TM-tools as those investments are unlikely to lead to substantial improvement in innovative outcomes. Only at a relatively high level of alliance portfolio partner diversity does the use of TM-tools really make a difference. With regard to the latter, our findings show that organizations at high levels of APDD, that want to make the most of the knowledge diversity of their alliance portfolio, should conduct three specific types of managerial actions, namely mapping the internally available knowledge, scanning the external environment for valuable knowledge, and making forecasts about future technological trajectories and developments. Instead of being overwhelmed by the diversity of cues coming in from their diverse portfolios, managers that help firms to intensively use TM-tools are able to absorb and process these cues, thereby spurring them to higher levels of innovation outcomes. Besides the contributions of this research, several limitations apply. First, the operationalization of APPD does not allow us to identify individual alliances, but only the existence of alliances with certain types of actors. This approach, which is adopted from the European Community Innovation Survey and has been used in most earlier research on the topic of alliance portfolio diversity as well (Duysters and Lokshin, 2011 and Laursen and Salter, 2006), was applied because the data collection problems become exceedingly large when firms are asked about (characteristics of) individual alliances. In order to be able to collect large scale data and, thereby, derive more externally valid results, we chose the research approach discussed in the above sources. Nevertheless, replication with more detailed alliance portfolio data seems a fruitful next step in this kind of research. Moreover, the alliance portfolio construct is clearly a multi-dimensional construct. This study is limited to the partner diversity dimension of the concept. Further research on other dimensions of the construct needs to be done to provide further support of the external validity of the findings reported in this study. Another limitation lies in the causality claims that can be made on the basis of our analyses. Despite the time lag between the measurements of APPD and a firm's innovation outcomes, our data remains cross-sectional. Without observing changes in one variable being followed in time by changes in another variable, a causal chain is impossible to establish. A similar concern can be voiced regarding the role of TM-tools. One could argue that TM-tools simply reflect a fixed ability of firms to transfer innovation inputs to innovation outputs and that they do not reflect time-varying activities that can be directly influenced through managerial action. Even though we have discussed earlier that our data shows that TM-tool use is significantly different from having organizational functions dedicated to TM-activities, observing changes in TM-tool activities over time and relating these to subsequent changes in innovation outcomes is required to provide grounds for causal claims. Despite these limitations, the main conclusion of this paper, that the role of TM-tools strongly moderates the inverted U-shaped relation between APPD and innovation outcomes, is robust and adds interesting insights to the literatures on alliance portfolios and alliance portfolio management in particular.