On the Relational Contract of The Industry- University-Institute Alliance’s Inter-firm Cooperation

摘要

This paper introduces relational contract to the field of knowledge management, defines relational rent in the Industry-University-Institute Alliance's cooperation, defines knowledge asset specificity of the core enterprise and the agent organization in the Industry-University-Institute Alliance, and analyses the different influences of the discount factor and the knowledge asset specificity on the self-enforceability of relational contract. Our research indicates that relational contract’ self-enforceability has positive correlation with the relational rent and the discount factor, and that only the high degree of knowledge asset specificity can assure relational contracts’ selfenforceability.