Do Cooperations Always Do Good to R&D Firms’ Innovation Performance? - Evidence from Chinese R&D Industries

Influence of partners’ cooperation on firm’s innovation is not consistent and varies in direction and significance. Nevertheless, few studies have assessed how formal and informal cooperation from research and development (R&D) industries, can affect firms’ innovation performance differently. Accordingly, this empirical research on a sample of 286 Chinese R&D firms evaluates whether formal and informal collaboration modes affect innovation performance in different ways. Moreover, it assesses the moderating role of task interdependence. The study observes that formal cooperation and task interdependence positively affect innovation performance; whereas, informal cooperation has adverse effect. In addition, the negative effect of informal cooperation is curtailed at higher degrees of task interdependence. The results contribute to resource dependence theory and innovation management literature indicating that formal collaboration and task interdependence are important to innovation performance, while informal collaboration does not fulfil the same role. Practically, R&D firms should carefully weigh cooperative modes to optimize their advantages and disadvantages. Besides, given that informal cooperation is inevitable, we suggest high task interdependence as a useful measure to protect firms’ innovation performance from the hazards of informal cooperation.