R&D alliance and SMEs' innovation performance: Exploring contingent roles of absorptive capacity and technological opportunity

Ji-Hoon Park () and Ribin Seo ()
Additional contact information
Ji-Hoon Park: Hanyang University
Ribin Seo: Dongduk Women’s University

Eurasian Business Review, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, No 3, 91 pages

Abstract: Abstract The strategy of forming research and development (R&D) alliances is effective for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to acquire external knowledge intentionally, thereby supplementing their knowledge deficiencies through interactions with alliance partners. However, the practical issue of these firms’ limitations can significantly curtail their potential to optimize the potential innovation returns of alliances. This issue is the focal point of our investigation, where we explore the influence of the firm’s absorptive capacity (AC) and technological opportunity (TO) on the performance-by-alliance mechanism. These two essential elements shape the firms’ accessibility to external knowledge at the organizational and environmental levels, respectively. To address potential self-selection bias in the decision of alliance engagement, we apply the propensity score matching method to a dataset of 2,460 Korean firms derived from the 2019 Survey on Technology of SMEs. We use data envelopment analysis to measure innovation performance by employing dyadic effectiveness and efficiency indicators. Our findings reveal that R&D alliance engagement enhances firms’ innovation effectiveness but not necessarily their efficiency. Interestingly, the positive relationship between alliance engagement and innovation effectiveness is amplified when firms demonstrate high AC and operate in low TO regimes. However, we also found a paradoxical result: firms show high AC and operate in high TO regimes, and alliance engagement yields diminishing returns in innovation efficiency. This unexpected finding underscores the complexity of the alliance engagement process. This study enriches the literature by presenting a new perspective on the cost-benefit orchestration in the alliance engagement process for SMEs. We highlight the crucial importance of determining the optimal AC-TO balance for value-capturing strategies within alliances, as it is vital to reconcile the dichotomy between innovation effectiveness and efficiency in the alliance-renting process.

Keywords: Small and medium-sized enterprises; Research and development alliance; Innovation efficiency; Innovation effectiveness; Absorptive capacity; Technological opportunity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40821-024-00285-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurasi:v:15:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s40821-024-00285-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40821

DOI: 10.1007/s40821-024-00285-4

Access Statistics for this article

Eurasian Business Review is currently edited by Marco Vivarelli

More articles in Eurasian Business Review from Springer, Eurasia Business and Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().