The formation of different collaborative structures and their implications for innovative performance; an empirical study of public R&D projects in the digital healthcare sector of Korea

The role of collaboration is becoming progressively more important to achieve innovation in an environment that is continually experiencing rapid technological changes as well as changing modes of knowledge production such as in the digital healthcare sector. However, little attention has been paid to understanding underlying inter-organisational collaboration mechanisms among diverse organisational types such as firms, universities, public research institutes, and hospitals in this sector. More specifically, this thesis examines why these organisations in the Korean digital healthcare sector establish inter-organisational collaborations, how different collaborative structures are established, and what effects these different collaborative structures have on innovative performance. In order to address these issues, this thesis proposes and verifies a novel conceptual framework based on three theoretical approaches (i.e. the national innovation system, transaction cost economics, and the resource- based view) in explaining strategic motives in the establishment of different collaborative structures categorised by focal organisational type. Mixed methods analysis, based on data regarding information on inter-organisational R&D collaborations, strategic motives in establishing the collaborations, and their respective innovative performance collected by a combination of desk-based research, a survey, and interviews, is employed. This thesis makes an interesting empirical contributions by finding different patterns in R&D productivity levels when one breaks down collaborative structures from the perspective of the type of focal organisations, whilst the productivity levels of R&D collaboration projects are generally lower than those of non-collaboration R&D projects in all aspects of R&D performance. We also confirm that each type of focal organisations is largely influenced by distinctive motives, although the strategic motive ‘to access complementary capabilities or resources’ relating to the resource-based viewperspective has a primary effect on all focal organisations in developing collaborative structures. Additionally, the thesis provides detailed information concerning how strategic motives affect focal organisations in choosing a particular type of collaborating partners.