داستان دو ادبیات: هزینه های معاملات و حقوق مالکیت در نوآوری برون سپاری

This paper investigates the relative importance of property rights and transactions cost factors in driving the decision of firms to outsource innovation. Using data for over 8000 firms from the UK Community Innovation Survey, we find that property right factors dominate over transaction cost factors. Transaction cost variables are more important for process innovation, while property rights variables are more significant for firms involved in product innovation. In addition, we find that firms involved in process innovation have a higher probability of outsourcing innovation than firms involved in product innovation.

Innovation and the outsourcing thereof is a double-edged sword. Using the ‘market’ for the generation of innovative inputs can confer a cost advantage on a firm. However, the downside is that, specifically in the context of innovation where knowledge can be exclusive to the originating firm, any transfer of knowledge to other firms runs the risk of opportunism by partner firms. Furthermore, reliance on third parties for the production of inputs in general incurs contracting costs, leading to production bottlenecks and quality issues. This double-edged sword summarising the decision to use the market for the generation of innovation, sits within the transaction cost (TC) and property rights (PR) literatures. However, there is a fuzzy divide between these two literatures defying efforts of ‘tidy’ economists to attribute predictions to their proper source. One major thrust of this paper is to attempt to do just that: to organise the predictions, even where these agree, for the decision to work together with a partner firm on developing innovative inputs.

When we look at the differences in how firms outsource product and process innovation, several patterns emerge. Generally, transaction cost factors are more important for process than product innovation, while property rights variables are more important for the latter. This is in line with our expectations. Our strongest finding, one that ties in with Love and Roper (2005), is that taken collectively, property rights variables are best at explaining both product and process inputs outsourced from another firm. PR variables dominate over TC variables, in so doing underpinning the high importance given to controlling knowledge flows and maintaining market share for outsourcing innovators. A summary of all the findings in relation to the hypotheses specified in this study is given in Table 6.