The effects of institutional environment upon innovation and performance: Collaborative external knowledge strategies in the cellular telephone industry

In this dissertation, I measure the performance of firms' collaborative external knowledge strategies (non-equity alliances, licensing, equity joint ventures, and acquisitions) under differing national institutional environments. I consider the effect of three institutional dimensions most likely to interact with the relationship between collaborative strategy and innovation performance: the degree of formalism in the legal system, the approach to protecting intellectual property rights, and the standards-setting regime surrounding the emergence of a dominant design. A qualitative case into standards-setting regimes, combined with an empirical study of firms' collaborations in the worldwide cellular telephone handset manufacturing industry, provides several interesting results.; Differences in legal environments with respect to intellectual property and contract law provide alternative opportunities for collaborative external knowledge strategies. At one extreme (high legal formalism) societies tend to organize their legal systems in a highly bureaucratic manner associated with complex set of legal procedures and statutory rules. In such countries, this study finds collaborative strategies exhibiting lower levels of control, such as non-equity alliances, are associated with higher innovation performance than those strategies with higher levels of control, such as equity joint ventures. The results are inconclusive with respect to countries with less bureaucratic legal systems, or low legal formalism. The findings demonstrate intellectual property protection and legal formalism operate differently on innovation performance associated with different types of collaborative strategies. The performance of high-control strategies is affected by intellectual property protection whereas the performance of low-control strategies is affected by legal formalism.; The process of establishing industry-wide technology standards vary systematically across countries, reflecting underlying structural arrangements of society. The findings reveal low-control collaborative strategies are associated with significant and positive innovation performance in those standards regimes dominated by a strong role for the state. In contrast, and contrary to expectation, innovation is associated with mid-level control strategies in regimes where governments play a coordinating role. There is no evidence that innovation performance varies across collaborative strategies in regimes that encourage a market-based, industry-driven standards framework.