Inter-firm partnerships and third parties in technological networks

(eng) To deal with the pace of technological development and the risks and costs imposed by R&D projects, firms need to collaborate and engage in technology partnerships going from licensing agreement to research joint venture. However, managers often struggle to find a right partner, to negotiate the contracts, to monitor the contractual relationships, and to enforce the contractual commitments. Entities (that we call ‘third parties’) have progressively developed skills that are highly valuable for firms wishing to engage in technology partnerships. Key third parties are technology brokers, patent attorneys, auditing firms, arbitrators, trade associations, and collective research centers. Surprisingly, the role of these third parties in technology partnerships has received extremely limited attention in the strategic management and business economics literature. This dissertation investigates the use of third-party services in technology partnerships through one theoretical and two empirical essays. We use as our frame of reference Transaction Cost Economics and Social Network Theory. Both streams of research provide specific pieces of the puzzle as we argue that relying on third parties will be variously beneficial depending on the transaction attributes and the firm’s social embeddedness. In light of this, the first essay positions the third parties in the Social Network framework. The second and third essays are empirical essays focusing on a specific form of technology partnership: the licensing agreement. The second essay investigates firms’ decision to resort to third parties at the first three contractual stages (identification, negotiation, and monitoring) and the third essay examines the last contractual stage (enforcement) through firms’ decision to include an arbitration provision in their contracts.