Abstract

Although the literature on industry-university alliances has begun to identify the factors that influence the performance of alliances, it gives relatively little concern on the behavioral characteristics of firms. This paper seeks to explore the behavioral characteristics that affect the performance of industry-university alliances. By taking a sample of 136 Chinese firms, the results indicated that several behavioral characteristics have significant impact on the performance of industry-university alliances. Resource investment and information sharing are found to have positive relationship with alliance performance, but no relationship was found between communication and alliance performance. It not only provided a theoretical model to analyze the behavioral characteristics that affect the performance of industry-university alliances, but was helpful both to improve management of alliances and to promote the success of alliances.

Key words: Industry-university alliances, performance, behavior, communication.