An Empirical Study On The Parent Control Of Research Joint Venture

In the research joint ventures, corporate partners exchange resources andmanagement experience and technical skills, share research and development costs anddevelopment risks through cooperation with each other. This not only improve theefficiency of resource use and development, but also to make the risk of spillover anddiffusion of research results small by internalize the technology.Nevertheless, with this form of organization gradually being accepted by more andmore institutions, some research joint ventures operate better, while some of them resultto poor performance. The reason why there is difference in operating results may lie inthe different parent control modes. This is because the essence of the relationshipbetween research joint venture is a cooperative alliance between members, and eachparent has a deep impact on the R&D decision-making and implementation.But the choice of the parent controls need to consider many factors. Previousstudies suggest that parent control is decided by capital, technology, brand, or otherresources that has an absolute advantage over others, however, different from thenormal joint ventures, both parent of research joint venture has technology advantageand undertake R&D investment in the research and development stage, the traditionalunilateral control mode cannot solve management problems encountered better.One important reason is that it does not connect the special characteristics ofresources invested with the proper options of the parent control. This study identify theusage-flexible and firm-specific resource, which is the most treasurable resource inresearch joint ventures for its heterogeneous competitive advantage and broad marketdemand, and the further study the usage-flexible and firm-specific resource’s impact onparent control from the perspective of value realization and risk prevention. The studyfound: usage-flexible and firm-specific resource has significantly different impact ondifferent relational risk arising from the relationship, and then directly or indirectlyaffected affect the choiceof parent control in research joint ventures; Meanwhile, afterthe establishment of the joint venture research, to maximize the effective value of theproprietary resources, usage-flexible and firm-specific resource have significant anddirect impact on the choice of the parent control mode.