The strategic motives behind firm's engagement in cooperative research and development : A new explanation from four theoretical perspectives

Purpose – The aim is to investigate and group the strategic motives that firms engage in cooperative R&D by exploring a new method. Design/methodology/approach – Four theories are adopted to explain the motives and they are cited as the base to categorize the motives into four factors. A survey questionnaire of participants in the aluminum industry is used to examine the empirical prevalence and clustering of these different categories of strategic motives. Factor analysis is used to test this measurement modeling. Findings – The results of the confirmatory factor analysis support this grouping of strategic motives as reliable and valid method. Research limitations/implications – The techniques used in this study when applied to group other motives or other similar issues could produce useful information in business and management research. Moreover, the theories employed in this research can help in hypothesis development and the relationship test between the factors and the formation of R&D alliances. Practical implications – The incentives such as strategic motives and the formation of R&D alliances studied in this paper can be used to investigate how they might be related to the aluminum or any other industry characteristics. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the modeling of measurement model in management by exploring a new method.