Partners Connection Process and Spatial Effects: New Insights from a Comparative Inter-Organizational Partnerships Analysis

Abstract

This article attempts to give new explanations of the spatial patterns of collaborations focusing on the partners' connection process. Taking into account actors are embedded in an historical, interpersonal and institutional space, we first consider organizations can construct a new collaboration or renew an old one when they decide to build a research project with a partner. Then, going back to the moment when they initially connect with their partners through the analysis of the genesis of collaborations, we assume that they can turn to their interpersonal ties or to coordination resources. This process of connection may influence the spatial dimensions of collaborations regarding notably the literature linking the use of interpersonal ties and the spatial proximity effects observed in innovation activities. We test empirically these theoretical propositions through the collection of individual data about more than 200 histories of inter-company (IC) and science-industry (SI) partnerships. The qualitative and quantitative treatments of these data reveal the way partners connect each other and the spatial patterns of collaborations are significantly dependent on the nature of the partnerships. A strong regularity is nevertheless highlighted: for both partnerships (IC and SI ones), actors renewed prior collaborations in 57% of the total of studied partnerships.

Notes

1. By actors, we mean organizations or individuals since the connection process between partners combines and mixes these two levels of analysis (cf. infra).

2. The term of “interpersonal ties” is privileged to the “social network” one to reduce ambiguity. Our analysis is nevertheless in the line of Granovetter's (1985) and Wellman's (1996) studies since they have been also interested in dyadic ties.

3. The University of Poitiers is one of the older in France and in Europe: it gathers 24,000 students or so and 934 researchers.

4. For more precisions, see Ferru (2009).

5. We never use explicitly during the interview the terms of “interpersonal relationship” or “coordination resource” to avoid any biases. We search to understand precisely how the first collaboration happened and reinterpret thereafter according to our theoretical grid.

6. These innovation activities features could impact the connection process and its spatial patterns (long-term contracts can give a higher probability to renew collaborations or to have spatial proximity effects between the partners for instance). Nevertheless, this information is not precised enough to be coded and integrated in the database.

7. RENEWED = 1 if the organization has renewed an old collaboration, 0 if the organization built a new partnership.

8. TIES = 1 if the organization initially relied on interpersonal ties to connect with its partner, 0 if the organization initially had recourse to a coordination resource.

9. IC_COLLAB = 1 if the collaboration is achieved by a Châtelleraudais firm with another company, 0 if the collaboration is established by a laboratory of the University of Poitiers with a firm.

10. Engineering sciences (ES), chemical sciences (CS), physical sciences (PS), biological sciences, humanities and social sciences, information technology (OTHER).

11. Chemical industry (CHEMIC), advices and assistance (ADV), household equipments (HOUS), electric and electronic equipments (ELECT), mechanical equipments (MECA), food industry (FOOD), automotive industry (AUTO), metallurgy (METAL).

12. The value of the contingency coefficient confirms this result.