기술협력 파트너의 관계적 다양성이 기업성과에 미치는 영향: 모방불가능성의 매개효과를 중심으로 = The Impact of Relational Diversity in Technology Cooperation Partners on Corporate Performance: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of Non-Imitability

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Many companies choose strategic alliances with various entities to strengthen internal and external innovation capabilities. Through such alliances, companies can gain benefits such as access to external management resources, economies of scope and scale, R&D synergies, and reductions in unnecessary effort and risk. As a result, they utilize strategic alliances as an important strategic alternative to address insufficient internal resources and enhance innovation and competitiveness. However, strategic alliances may also cause opportunistic behavior and monitoring costs, or offset their positive factors by promoting imitability through isomorphism in partner firms. Consequently, there exist factors that hinder the positive effects of technological cooperation on corporate performance.
Accordingly, this study sought to offer a complementary explanation of the positive effects of technological cooperation on corporate performance by focusing on inimitability, which has received little attention in previous research. To empirically verify this, we examined how the relational diversity of technological cooperation partners affects corporate performance by mediating inimitability, using domestic small and medium-sized enterprises’ technological statistics data published by the Korea Federation of SMEs. The research results showed that the relational diversity of technology cooperation partners partially and positively influenced corporate performance, thereby empirically demonstrating that increasing this diversity reduces the likelihood of imitation.