Standardization Alliance Networks, Standard-Setting Influence, and New Product Outcomes

摘要

Standardization alliances evolve through collaborations among firms for developing and implementing industry technical standards. Cooperative standard setting can help allied firms to gain access to external knowledge and technologies, but it is unclear how the configuration of a standardization alliance can result in improving a firm's performance in new product development. This study examines how standardization alliance network-based resource advantages vary across a firm's network position and the firm's ability to influence industry standard setting and new product outcomes. Empirical analyses, based on archival data from 170 Chinese automobile manufacturers from 1999 to 2013, indicate that firms that span structural holes in standardization alliance networks gain an advantage when focusing on early new product introductions but suffer a disadvantage when aiming at more innovative products. In contrast, taking a central position in standardization alliance networks is negatively related to a firm's speed in bringing new products to market but positively related to the firm's new product introduction rate. Further, standard-setting influence significantly mediates the effect of network position on a firm's new product speed to market. Increasing centrality and structural holes can lead to the improvement of a firm's standard-setting influence, and this, in turn, positively affects speed to market.