Inter-organizational cooperation in regional innovation systems: A catalyst of transactive memory systems

Transactive memory systems(TMS), which is widely used to explain how members in the organization rely on each other in a knowledge network, and how they use their professional knowledge and skills to achieve mutual goals. Lewis (2003) provides a conceptual framework to draw a whole picture of TMS, comprising three parts: (1) specialized and differentiated team knowledge (specialization), (2) trust level between members and their reliance on each others´ knowledge (credibility), and (3) smooth, organized, and coordinated task processes (coordination). However, past studies focused on the group level inside the organization, little work has been done on the organization level; this mechanism is applied to inter-organizational situation in this current study. We attempt to explore if TMS may exert an influence on the performance of inter-organizational cooperation in regional innovation systems (RIS), to capture how members´ collaboration may work in RIS. Data is collected from the industries in central Taiwan, which is a developing RIS, including electronic, mechanical, and medical industries. The main purpose of the current study is to reveal the implicit mechanism of inter-organizational cooperation. The results show that TMS is indeed a catalyst of organizational level collaboration; in other words, TMS is positively related to the performance. This research provides a new perspective to evaluate industrial cooperation, and the difference between the effects of these three dimensions is further discussed as well.