Success potential of international R&D cooperations

Cooperation in Research and Development constitutes a new phenomena both for managers as well as for management scientists. Starting in the early Eigthies there has been an immense growth of such cooperations between Single - even competing - enterprises (Hagedoom, 1991). By pooling resources and realizing synergies firms try to gain various positive effects as e.g. generation of new ideas, saving of time and costs or reduetion of risks (Rotering, 1990). However, cooperations also encounter potential pitfalls caused by opportunistic behavior of the partners who remain independent and who pursue foremost their own interests (Bresser, 1986). The variety of arguments in favor of and against R&D-cooperations as well as the spread of de-facto successes and failures show the high complexity of the issue (Hagedoom, Schaakenraad, 1990). Due to the novelty of the phenomena, an integrated theoretical model explaining success or failure has not been developed by now. The explanatory approaches derive from different theoretical diseiplines, their conclusions are in part complementary, and in part they are controversial. This study tries to integrate key elements derived from theory. Arguments in favor and against R&D Cooperation will be analyzed simultaneously. We want to explore the relative importance of the key variables that may determine the success potential of cooperative R&D agreements as well as their interaction effects. This will be achieved by a conjoint analysis.