Planning for risk or planning for performance? Managing resource requirements and coordination concerns in technology alliance agreements

The choice of efficient contractual form is often framed as the selection of a degree of hierarchical intensity suitably matching the level of contractual hazards. We posit that technology collaboration contracts are also responsive to the configuration of resources and to coordination concerns and that contractual solutions may be multidimensional and differ 'in kind'. A sample of joint R&D biotechnology agreements provides broad support for propositions concerning the antecedents. Moreover, we find that the way certain contracts are chosen in response to various contingencies, challenges the idea that they can be usefully characterized as 'intermediate' between polar forms of governance