Interorganizational collaboration and firm innovativeness: Unpacking the role of the organizational environment

Infirm decisions to engage in interorganizational collaboration in the context of innovation, conceptions of theorganizational environment play an essential role. In this paper, we develop a multidimensional model of howmanagers use interorganizational collaboration as an organizational response to particular environmental condi-tions and an important instrument to boostfirm innovativeness. Based on a literature review on the subject, weinvestigated the role of environmental turbulence, market heterogeneity and competitive intensity as suchconditions. The analysis offirm data from a broad range of industries showed that environmental turbulenceand market heterogeneity have an indirect association withfirm innovativeness through interorganizationalcollaboration. The relationship of market heterogeneity was fully mediated suggesting that collaboration is un-avoidable forfirms in heterogeneous markets. Contrary to arguments in the literature, thefindings demonstratedthat although competitive intensity is associated with less interorganizational collaboration and lowerfirminnovativeness, the mediation relationship was not significant.

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