INTRODUCTION

Since the late-20th century, there has been a growing incidence of collaboration among organizations to perform R&D (e.g., Gassmann & von Zedtwitz 1999; Hagedoorn et al. 2000; Hagedoorn & van Kranenburg 2003; Richards & De Carolis 2003). An increasingly important area of this interorganizational collaboration, driven by government policies and corporate strategies, has been that of cross-sector R&D collaboration (e.g., McMillan et al. 2000; Okubu & Sjoberg 2000; Schartinger et al. 2002; Feller et al. 2002; Fontana et al. 2006). This involves universities, companies, and public sector research agencies collaborating on R&D projects either directly (e.g., in partnerships, consortia or joint ventures) or under the auspices of intermediary agencies such as technology councils, extension services, commercialization agencies, industry associations, collaborative research centres, and various forms of new technology-based 'business incubator'.

Although cross-sector R&D collaborations are claimed to offer many benefits for the participants (e.g., a sharing of costs and risks, access to complementary resources), the relationships formed can be difficult to manage so that they deliver beneficial outcomes while avoiding any negative consequences for the partners. Such collaborations present many risks for the partners involved, not only because of the uncertainties associated with R&D but also because of the difficulties arising from the need to manage relationships among disparate organizational cultures (e.g., which differ according to their governance structures, reward systems, strategic objectives, modes of operation, capabilities, resources, operational timeframes, and commitments). From a management perspective, therefore, the central question is: how can public sector and private sector partners manage a collaboration to build productive working relationships under conditions of high risk and high uncertainty?

Many scholars have addressed this question and have sought to provide advice on the successful management of such endeavours, especially those formed between university and industry partners (e.g., Burnham 1997; Cyert & Goodman 1997; Gregory 1997; Liebeskind & Oliver 1997; Champness 2000; Starbuck 2001; Barnes et al. 2002, 2006; Murray 2002; Santoro & Betts 2002; Mora-Valentin et al. 2004; Lhuillery & Pfister 2009). While this scholarly activity has identified a range of 'success factors' and 'good practices' to guide managers, to date such efforts have been largely prescriptive and have generally not involved the systematic formulation and empirical testing of the proposed propositions and models. This paper thus addresses an important knowledge gap by reporting on key findings from the second phase of a four year study of the management of risks in the Australian Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) Program. (1) As part of that study, a theoretical model explaining partner collaborative experience and project outcomes was formulated and tested through a survey of CRC project managers. The study examined multi-lateral collaborations, involving four types of organizations (i.e., universities, public sector research agencies, companies, and the CRC as a 'third party' brokering agency), and so differs from most dyadic university/industry partnership studies. By focusing on project-level collaborations, the study goes beyond the organizational level of analysis, though we acknowledge the embedded nature of all forms of collaborations. Further, rather than address the developmental aspect of collaborative projects, the study investigated projects that had been completed or were near completion so project relationships were at a mature stage and project outcomes were known.

THE PROPOSED THEORETICAL MODEL

As previously noted, we were concerned with the management of risk in commercially-focused collaborative R&D projects, i.e., those explicitly established with the intention of producing some financial benefit to the partners, such as the creation of marketable intellectual property. What is particularly interesting in these projects is that, although they are not established on the basis of market transactions (in contrast to a company contracting out research to a supplier), and they involve public sector organizations, which are not generally motivated by market considerations, they are set up to develop marketable products or other commercializable outputs. Furthermore, they are often seen as particularly risky for the partners, in that much is at stake (both in terms of investments and returns) and there is considerable uncertainty about achieving a profitable outcome.

Preliminary qualitative research undertaken by the authors had indicated that there were two main kinds of risk involved: those arising from the relationship (e.g., partners might not deliver on their commitments or may even behave opportunistically to the detriment of the other partners), and those arising from the project activities themselves (e.g., budgets might be exceeded or objectives might not be met (Couchman & Fulop 2004). Consideration of the former led to an engagement with the construct of trust. It is now generally agreed that trust is an essential prerequisite for cooperative interorganizational relationships, especially for those collaborations which involve high levels of uncertainty about outcomes (e.g., Ring & Van de Ven 1992, 1994; Ring 1996; Hausler et al. 1995; de Laat 1997). Most importantly, trust--as a positive expectation about a collaboration partner (Moorman et al. 1992; Sako 1992; Sako & Helper 1998)--not only attenuates perceptions of partner-related risk, thereby lessening the need for extensive project controls and reducing transaction costs, it also encourages risk-taking as well as the sharing of proprietary information, both of which are necessary in the highly uncertain area of R&D (Krishnan et al. 2006: 910). Consideration of the latter area of risk also led us to the practice of project management, which has been defined as 'the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project' (Project Management Institute 1996: v).

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By drawing on the literature and the findings of our preliminary qualitative research, a theoretical model was formulated to explain the collaborative experience of the project partners and their perceptions of project success. The main effects in this model (a subset of a larger model which also included antecedents to the explanatory constructs) are shown in Figure 1. This element of the model proposed that a cross-sector R&D project, which has both a strong relationship focus (measured in terms of relational trust among those engaged in the project), and a strong task focus (measured in terms of the project management competence of the project team), is likely to be seen in more positive terms by the project partners and is more likely to be seen as successful.

The following section discusses the four constructs that form the focus of this paper, and the associated hypotheses derived from the main effects proposed in the model.

Constructs explained: Partner collaboration experience and project success

We chose to explain the project partners' perceived collaboration experience, i.e., a subjective measure of the participants' attitudes towards the collaboration (Genefke 2001; Jap 2001). Studying more tangible R&D project outcomes is difficult due to time lags, whereby commercialization is achieved over a long period and often outside of the timeframe set by the immediate project objectives. We postulated that there would be a positive association between partners' attitudes and successful project outcomes, as has been indicated in many previous studies. Our approach to collaboration experience was based on that taken by Jap (2001) who used the construct of 'relationship quality' to refer to an assessment in terms of perceived satisfaction, perceived outcome fairness and future expectations of the relationship. Thus, in our model the dependent variable, Partner Collaboration Experience, consists of three attitudinal dimensions: (a) the extent to which the participants were satisfied with the collaboration; (b) the extent to which the participants perceived the collaboration outcomes to be fair; and (c) the extent to which the working relationship among the participants was seen to be sufficiently rewarding that further collaboration would be seen as desirable if the opportunity arose. We used a slightly abbreviated and modified version of Jap's (2001) scale to measure this construct (see Appendix 1). In seeking to identify a global measure of project 'success', we noted that most studies of cross-sector collaboration have used performance measures that are difficult to apply to the type of projects we studied (e.g., Bonaccorsi & Piccaluga 1994; Brockhoff & Teichert 1995; Geisler 1995; Santoro & Chakrabarti 1999). Measuring the effectiveness of collaborations is a complex problem and an underdeveloped area of research on R&D alliances, let alone at the project level in cross-sector R&D collaborations. So, in order to gain a general indication of partner perceptions of project outcomes, we created the construct of 'Project Success' made up of four indicators: project objectives fully met, project delivered within budget, agreed project success, and valuable knowledge created for partners. Based on the findings of our pilot study, we asked a direct question on partner perceptions of project success to ensure that a low score on one of the other indicators would not skew the results. It has been noted, for example, that having projects delivered within budget can be a problem in these types of R&D collaborations and a project could still be considered a 'success' regardless of the performance on the budget.