臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.29 NO.1

97 NTU Management Review Vol. 29 No. 1 Apr. 2019 learning strategy and be more inclined to choose their R&D partners among their external stakeholders, but this inclination will be mitigated when the host countries are full of institutional voids. Nevertheless, firms in their foreign entries for market expansion may not necessarily adopt the exploitative learning strategy as the prior research suggests but, instead, undertake the exploratory learning when their existing technologies may be insufficient for localizing their products/services to serve specific demands of host countries; furthermore, they may partner their external stakeholders for obtaining new technologies, the up-to-date governmental policies and good protections for appropriation of the co-developed intellectual properties when the host countries are full of institutional voids. This study contributes theoretically to the research stream of foreign R&D partner selection in two aspects. First, it bridges the gap in the extant fragmented literature by synthesizing the organizational learning theory, the transactional costs economics, and the stakeholder perspective altogether to demonstrate why, how, where, and whom to choose for the R&D collaboration. Second, by examining the impacts of institutional failures of the host countries, this study suggests that the existence of the take-for-granted trusts embedded in the close ties, e.g., within the internal or primary stakeholders, may be questionable. This study also contributes to the practice. It provides the firm management teams with a holistic perspective for making the efficient and effective R&D partner selections. The partner selection process is time- and cost-consuming with potential risks, e.g., adverse selections and moral hazards, due to incomplete information and information asymmetry derived from the nature of bounded rationality and tacit knowledge. Firms may be overwhelmed by details and neglect some crucial antecedents of decisions if they divulge into the fine-grained screening for potential partners in the initial stage. As such, they may be likely to waste their efforts and limited resources, miss the right timing to market, and, even worse, make the adverse selections. The study suggests the management teams not to divulge fully into the fine-grained specifications of foreign R&D partners at the beginning without clarifying their foreign entry motives, identifying the suitable learning strategies, and examining the institutional completeness of host countries.