The complementarities and contextualities of corporate R&D strategies: An empirical analysis of Korean manufacturing industry

By reflecting upon recent theoretical developments in open innovation studies, we shed new light on diverse potential sources of complementarities between corporate R&D activities as well as on contextual factors that could affect the complementarities. In particular, to break from the previous discussions confined to absorptive capacity, we considered the diverse knowledge management processes of knowledge exploration, retention, and exploitation. Then we empirically examined the existence of complementarities between corporate R&D strategies and uncovered the contextual factors. Our empirical results suggest the possible existence of a complementary relationship between in-house and joint R&D. We also discovered the firm-specific contextual variables, such as a firm's cumulative patent stocks and scientific information inflows from public research institutes and universities, that drive the decision to combine in-house and joint R&D. Our theoretical discussions on firms' diverse knowledge management processes allow more enriched understanding on these empirical findings.