Study On Co-innovation Via Strategic Alliances Based On Co-opetition Perspective

To cope with increased global competition and acceleration of technological innovation,firms must develop new products quickly.Competition of knowledge and speed makes firms consider establishing strategic alliances with other firms and adopting cooperative innovation to speed up product development.Cooperative innovation via strategic alliances has become one of the most important innovation ways,and has become an important means for firms to improve their innovation performance.Scholars have explored the cooperative innovation via strategic alliances,and great achievements have been made in research.With the development of the theory of strategic alliance and co-innovation practice via strategic alliances,more and more studies want to explain the performance differences of firms with alliance capabilities from firm level.The research on alliance capabilities has been regarded as one of the most valuable research directions in the field of strategic alliance.It has great theoretical and practical value to explain the mechanism of cooperative innovation via strategic alliances from the perspective of alliance capabilities.As an important organizational capability at the firm level,alliance capabilities have a significantly impact on the success of alliance,alliance performance and other aspects.Alliance capabilities have attracted attention of scholars.However,its impact on cooperative innovation performance still needs to be further studied,especially considering that there is competition and cooperation among strategic alliances partners at the same time.Researches on the impact of alliance management capabilities on cooperative innovation performance from coopetition perspective are not too many.Therefore,this paper studies the influence of alliance management capabilities on cooperative innovation performance at the alliance operation stage from coopetition perspective,and builds an analysis framework of alliance management capabilities,interfirm coopetition relationship,knowledge transfer and cooperative innovation performance.This paper discusses the related theories,including resource-based theory,knowledge-based views,dynamic capability theory and social exchange theory,and makes a comprehensive and systematic literature review of alliance research perspective,co-opetition,co-innovation,alliance capabilities and knowledge transfer.Based on related theories and literature reviews,this paper builds a conceptual model from coopetition perspective,puts forward specific research hypotheses,and verifies the hypothesis with questionnaire survey datas.We collected a total of 169 copies of the questionnaire,and verified the questionnaire reliability and validity with SPSS17.0 and AMOS 21.0.We found that the questionnaire has a good reliability and validity.The hypotheses were verified with multivariate hierarchical regression,structural equation model and bootstrap method.The results showed that:(1)alliance management capabilities consist of three dimensions including coordination ability,communication ability and connection ability.The interfirm coopetition relationship consists of two dimensions including cooperation and competition.(2)A significant positive correlation between alliance management capabilities and cooperation is verified,and a significant negative correlation between alliance management capabilities and competition is verified.That is to say,it will be easier to strengthen cooperation among firms and ease competition among firms if a firm has stronger alliance management capabilities.(3)There is a significant correlation between cooperation,competition and knowledge transfer.Cooperation is positively related to knowledge transfer,and competition is significant negatively related to knowledge transfer.That is to say,cooperation helps to promote knowledge transfer,and competition will hinder knowledge transfer.(4)Alliance management capabilities have an impact on knowledge transfer through influencing the coopetition relationship,and then influence the cooperative innovation performance.Competition and cooperation are mediators of alliance management capabilities and knowledge transfer.Alliance management capabilities have an impact on cooperative innovation performance with interfirm coopetition relationship(competition,cooperation)and knowledge transfer as sequenced mediators.Compared with the existing research,the main innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1)This paper builds an integrated research framework consist of alliance management capabilities,interfirm coopetition relationship,knowledge transfer and cooperative innovation performance,based on sequenced mediating model to find intrinsic mechanism of alliance management capabilities influencing the cooperative innovation performance.This study truly reflects the essence of inter-firms relationship among strategic alliance cooperative innovation activities,provides a new research framework for the study of cooperative innovation via strategic alliances,and lays a foundation for further research on cooperative innovation via strategic alliances.(2)This study explores the mechanism of alliance management capacities influenceing cooperative innovation performance,and hope to explain the differences of cooperative innovation performance based on interfirm coopetition from alliance management capabilities perspective.Therefore,this study can solve the innovation dilemma of coopetition.The previous researches on alliance capabilities mainly focused on the construct of alliance capabilities and how alliance capabilities affected alliance management,and empirical researches on alliance management capabilities are not many.This paper focuses on the back-end of alliance management,and analyze mechanisms of alliance capabilities affecting cooperative innovation performance.This study can help to enhance the theoretical explaination of alliance management capabilities utility and enrich the connotation of strategic alliance theory based on alliance management level.(3)This paper is different from traditional view on alliance management and its performance from cooperation perspective,as well as a few research on alliance management based on competition perspective.With the integration of cooperation perspective and competition perspective,this paper analyzes the dynamic nature of coopetition relationship that cooperation and competition are co-exsist at the same time,and fully considering the different impacts of competition and cooperation on alliance activities.Through analyzing competition and cooperation among firms,this study tries to explorate how alliance management capabilities affect cooperative innovation through coopetition relationship,and hopes to integrate effecting mechanism of cooperative innovation from micro-level(firm)and meso-level(relationship).It reflects the interaction and symbiosis between firms and alliance.This study promotes the further reasearch on cooperative innovation via strategic alliances,enriches and improves the theory of strategic alliances,cooperative innovation,alliance capabilities,coopetition and other related fields.This study has a certain reference value for furture relevant theoretical research in the future.At the same time,the conclusions can also provide some references and guidances for cooperative innovation practice via strategic alliances.