Co-opetition and Corporate R&D Disclosure : Evidence from Standard-Setting Organizations

We examine whether firms’ co-opetition (i.e., simultaneously competitive and cooperative) behaviors in standard-setting organizations (SSOs) affect their public R&D disclosure. We find that relative to matched control firms, firms that participate in SSOs increase their narrative R&D disclosure to the public after SSO participation. The effect of SSO participation on narrative R&D disclosure is more pronounced for firms with a greater ex-ante proprietary cost of disclosure and firms with higher investor information demand. Further analyses show that narrative R&D disclosure increases with the percentage of competitors in the SSO and that SSO participation raises not only the quantity but also the information content of such disclosure. Overall, the findings suggest that co-opetition inside SSOs facilitates the sharing of proprietary R&D information with competitors. This reduces firms’ proprietary cost of disclosure, incentivizing them to disclose more R&D information to the public