| With the technology developing more quickly and products' life cycles becoming shorter as well as the business competition growing more turbulent, the operation environment for most enterprises has changed dramatically. Therefore, it is badly important for enterprises to innovate in good time in techniques and products in order to survive and develop in the new era.In the past it was emphasized to innovate inside, but nowadays more and more people have realized that the knowledge-creation only depending on interior limited resources is bound to encounter new challenges. So, enterprises are forced to restructure their own inner R&D systems to reinforce the cross-functional cooperation on the one hand, and readjust their scope of operation to seek collaboration with outsiders for same or complementary innovation goals on the other hand. Under such circumstances, not only scholars but also industry participants are showing more and more interest in cooperative R&D. It is because the organizational structure determines the operational performance and proper structures will make cooperative R&D activities more efficient that this dissertation focuses on the mode-selection and governance mechanism of cooperative R&D. However, there exist many kinds of cooperative R&D organizational modes in practice and only several of them will be selected and studied here, for example, R&D-project procurements among the vertical, Research Joint Ventures, Cross-licensing Agreements and R&D alliances among the horizontal. The reason why these specific forms are chosen is that the dissertation also aims to contribute to restructure the R&D systems in China's loose corporation groups.In order to explore the mode-selection and governance mechanism of cooperative R&D, the whole dissertation is divided into four parts including eight chapters together.The first part, foundation of the whole study, consists of the first and the second chapter.The first chapter is the introduction. It is concluded at first that cooperative R&D is becoming the important knowledge-creation mode because of the trend of technology development and the evolvement of innovation modes. Then, the literature about cooperative R&D is summarized in the managerial and in the industrialorganization theory perspective respectively. After that, the practical need is analyzed to restructure the R&D systems of China's loose corporation groups. Based on the discussion, the study object is put forward. Besides these, the chapter also shows the thread, the framework and the main content of the whole study.The second chapter investigates the types and the evolvement of cooperative R&D modes. The knowledge-creation organizations employed by enterprises can be categorized into interior R&D organizations and cooperative R&D organizations. The former mainly includes R&D centers, new venture branches, inner enterprises and innovation project teams while the latter mainly comprises the mode involved equity, the entrusting to outsiders as well as the mode without equity and entrustment. In fact the invisible of them have the essence of the virtual R&D organization to some extent. From the other perspective, namely according to the types of knowledge-production factors shared by participators, the three kinds of cooperative modes mentioned above can also be classified with two kinds: the horizontal and the vertical.The second part includes the chapters from the third to the sixth, of which the former two are about the formal and informal contracts in R&D project procurements of the vertical cooperative mode, while the latter two discuss the mode-selection and the profit sharing of the horizontal mode.The third chapter studies the type-selection of R&D project procurement contracts. A principal-agent model is set up to draw the conclusion that fixed-price contracts (FP) may be superior to cost-plus contracts (C+) in the efficiency of ex post renegotiation caused by asymmetric information. Then, a comparison between FP and C+ is made about the potential abilit...
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