Beyond complementarity and substitutability? Understanding relational governance and formal contracts in university-industry collaborations for innovation

Despite recent attention in the literature on the governance of inter-organisational relationships to a process perspective, existing literature tends to neglect the heterogeneity between parties and the various paths and outcomes through which organisations manage to work together towards agreed goals and overcome their conflicts and contradictions. Inter-organisational collaborations for innovation (and university-industry collaborations in particular) involve many trade-offs and a complex process of joint problem-solving and knowledge transfer. We draw on an original survey of university academics and their collaborations for innovation with industry, and employ a configuration approach and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the interrelated and complex dynamics. We find that in university-industry collaborations aimed at upstream research involving novel scientific knowledge, where goals and deliverables are ambiguous and uncertain, two mechanisms support the collaboration. These include, first, a combination of relational governance and formal contracts and, second, relational governance alone. In contrast, in collaborations for the setting up of spin-offs, where goals and deliverables are specific and clear, only a combination of relational governance and formal contracts supports the collaborations. Formal contracts are always core to facilitating such collaborations. We uncover how different dimensions of relational governance are conducive to the development of, and knowledge transfer in, the different types of collaborations in combination with formal contracts. We thus go beyond debates over the complementarity or substitutability of relational governance and formal contracts in inter-organisational collaborations by exploring in more detail the nature, paths and outcomes of such relationships. We also contribute to extending the university-industry collaboration literature by showing the governance conditions associated with knowledge exchange attributes of different types and phases of university-industry collaborations. • We show an alternative perspective of university-industry collaboration dynamics. • We go beyond substitution or complementarity of relational governance and formal contracts. • We acknowledge complexity and interrelations of relational governance and formal contracts. • We explore equifinality and combinations of different conditions of the collaborations. • Multiple configurations of relational governance and formal contracts influence the collaborations. • Conditions differ depending on types and phases of the collaborations.