فرصت طلبی در اتحاد تحقیق و توسعه شرکت های کوچک و متوسط: نقش محیط نهادی و اندازه شرکت های کوچک و متوسط

SME leaders with R&D alliances face significant challenges in balancing the need for resource acquisition in the innovation process and the potential for opportunistic behavior by alliance partners. This study, utilizing a sample of 456 SMEs from eight countries, examines how the resource capacity of the SME and the institutional environment are related to the perceptions that owners and managers have about the opportunistic behavior of alliance partners. The results suggest that firm size moderates the relationship between the technological munificence and the predominant culture of the domestic market of the SME and concerns about the opportunistic behavior of an SME alliance partner.

This research extends the resource-based view of the firm by developing an understanding of the role of SME resources in moderating the relationship between the attributes of the institutional environment of the SME and perceptions of behavior within alliance relationships. In specific, it implies that the inherent uncertainty of the R&D alliances of SMEs is compounded by the interaction of critical attributes of the institutional environment and the internal resources, as reflected by size, of the SME. The result of the analysis suggest that future models and theories of cooperative alliances should include SME size as a critical moderator in the relationship between environmental resources and constraints and perceptions of behavior within alliance relationships. Several limitations must be noted in the research that while limiting the generalization of our findings also suggest avenues for future research. First, our primary focus was on the institutional environment at the level of the country of origin of the SME. In addition to national level differences, differences across the institutional environments of the various industries represented in this study may also have an impact on perceived opportunism. In this study, we only looked at the level of technology within the industry group. Future research on the relationship between the institutional environment and perceived opportunism would benefit from a consideration of such industry level factors as industry density, level of maturity and R&D intensity. Our conclusions regarding the relationship between the origin of the legal system and perceived opportunism is also limited by inclusion of only one English common law country in the sample. It should also be noted that while we believe that the unique characteristics of R&D alliances are worthy of study, generalizing the findings of this study to other types of alliances should be considered carefully. These limitations aside, the results of this research provide significant evidence that SME size is an important moderator in the relationship between the institutional environment of the alliance and SME concerns about opportunistic behavior.