The Impact of Partner Organizational Structure on Innovation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Balachandran, Sarath; Eklund, John
• 署名单位: University of London; London Business School; University of Southern California; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.1177/00018392231212680
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 80-130
• 关键词: research-and-development; interorganizational collaboration; absorptive-capacity; KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS; trade-offs; performance; corporate; TECHNOLOGY; firm; centralization

摘要

Interorganizational partnerships can spur innovation, but their value may be diminished by friction in knowledge flows between firms. We consider how a partner's organizational structure may influence the knowledge that is accessible via partnerships. We focus on how a partner's structure trades off localized autonomy for its managers, which facilitates timelier decision making, and unified control, which facilitates integration. By shaping this balance, centralization of decision rights within the partner organization shapes access to its knowledge. Centralized structures generate wide-ranging internal knowledge pathways that enable access to a broader array of a partner's knowledge. However, the reduced managerial autonomy afforded by centralization makes decision making more cumbersome, which constricts the rate of access to a partner's knowledge. We find evidence of this tradeoff in the context of corporate venture capital relationships between incumbents and startups in the pharmaceutical industry. An increase in the incumbent's diversity of knowledge or in the knowledge required by the startup enhances the value of a greater breadth of access, whereas the degree to which the startup can leverage social ties (affinity) or hierarchical fiat (authority) alleviates the costs of a reduced access rate. Each of these features makes an incumbent organization's centralization more valuable to the startup. By highlighting this tension related to centralization, our findings suggest that new firms striving to maximize their partnership benefits may need to carefully consider their partners' internal structures.