Technological collaboration has been spotlighted as a vehicle to learn other organizations and to improve own capabilities. A few studies on learning and collaboration have been done, but researches to link two areas have been limited to conceptual or case studies.
This study focuses on the learning activities and learning levels in technological collaboration projects. The research questions are as follows:
1) What are contents of technological learning activities in technological collaboration?
2) What facilitate learning activities, and influence on learning levels in technological collaboration projects?
3) What are the relationships between activities / levels of learning and performance of projects? How do those relationships differ according to the characteristics of projects - technology oriented project or market oriented project?
Based on the review of related literatures, a research model and hypotheses are generated.
72 mail questionaires are collected from managers of collaboration projects. Correlation, multiple regression analysis, and ANOVA are used to test main hypotheses, and path analysis is employed additionally to show the direct effects of antecedents on collaboration performance.
The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, in technological collaboration, acquisition, dissemination, application, and, storage of knowledge or information are revealed as main learning activities, but dissemination activity is not clearly identified.
Second, the characteristics related to firm (learning intent, preparation for collaboration projects, and technological capability), and the characteristics related to partner and interaction (collaborative openness, and partner's technological capability) are significantly correlated with learning activities. Learning levels are only influenced by learning intent, and only teachability among the chracteristics of technology transferability is correlated with learning activities.
Third, the degree of learning activity is significantly correlated with collaboration performance, especially application activity of knowledge or information is the most important determinant in technological collaboration. The effects of learning activities, especially dissemination, and storage activities on performance of collaboration projects are different according to the project characteristics. The more projects are technology oriented, the stronger effects of learning activities on performance.
Fourth, antecedents of learning activities - such as characteristics related to the firm, partner and interaction, and technology transferability - have shown strong influences on the performance of collaboration projects. But direct effects of antecedents on performance are weaker than indirect effects through learning activities. The relationships among antecedents, learning activities, and performance are not varied depending on the contigent variables, such as the type of collaboration projects, firm size, industries, and countries of collaboration partners.
Finally, managerial implications drawn from findings are suggested to help improving collaboration performance, and the limitations of this studies, and directions for futher research are presented.
