Social mechanisms, knowledge benefits, and performance outcomes in innovation-oriented interorganizational relationships

Innovation-oriented interorganizational relationships (IOIRs) embedded in social networks are increasingly important devices for knowledge access, transfer, and co-production, which have been found to generate significant performance benefits and competitive advantages for participating organizations. However, we need to deepen our understanding of how value is created in IOIRs. The knowledge benefits of IOIRs and the resulting performance gains for partner firms have been traced back to the peculiarities of network forms of organization, especially to the coordination mechanisms that characterize network governance . Whereas an extensive body of research has investigated a number of social mechanisms individually and discussed their influence on several organizational outcomes, we still lack a more systematic and comprehensive account of the processes of network governance, encompassing the social mechanisms and their antecedents, the relationships among the mechanisms, how the mechanisms influence the partners propensity to engage in knowledge-intensive initiatives, and how resulting knowledge benefits affect performance. Finally, the dynamics of the linkages among social mechanisms (and their antecedents), knowledge benefits, and performance outcomes, need to be elucidated and integrated into the above account.