The cornerstone of corporate innovation rests on knowledge collaboration among enterprises, a process that hinges on the accumulation, transformation, and joint creation of core knowledge resources across firms. In the digital economy landscape, platform governance, by fostering the aggregation effect of knowledge flow, incentivizes enterprises to construct open and shared knowledge collaboration frameworks through platform mechanisms. While serving as an effective facilitator for stakeholder interactions, platform governance can exert both positive and negative influences on knowledge collaboration among enterprises. Hence, facilitating such collaboration within platform contexts emerges as a critical and urgent issue.Existing research predominantly delves into the independent impacts of diverse governance models on knowledge collaboration, often overlooking their combined effects. This limitation hinders a comprehensive understanding of how platform governance mechanisms operate. This study, adopting a matching perspective, zeroes in on two quintessential platform governance models—"relational governance" and "contractual governance"—to probe their impacts on knowledge collaboration. It aims to analyze the independent and combined influences of these governance models on knowledge collaboration among enterprises participating in the platform,and examine the pivotal moderating roles played by platform attributes.〖HJ*3〗
Drawing on transaction cost theory and social capital theory, this paper employs nonlinear regression and response surface analysis techniques to dissect how relational governance, contractual governance, and their degree of match affect knowledge collaboration. The research focuses on regions with relatively developed platform economies, including Jiangsu, Shandong, and others, and analyzes a dataset comprising 879 samples using statistical tools like SPSS 27.0 and AMOS 28.0.Key findings include six parts: (1) Relational governance exerts a significantly positive impact on knowledge collaboration, fostering trust and cooperation among enterprises. (2) Contractual governance demonstrates a positive U-shaped relationship with knowledge collaboration, indicating that its effectiveness may increase beyond a certain threshold. (3) Greater consistency between relational and contractual governance enhances knowledge collaboration, suggesting a synergistic effect. (4) The "strong relational-strong contractual" governance model outperforms the "weak relational-weak contractual" model in promoting knowledge collaboration. (5) Interestingly, the "strong relational-weak contractual" governance model yields higher levels of knowledge collaboration compared to the "weak relational-strong contractual" model, highlighting the importance of relational elements. (6) Platform strategic consensus positively moderates the impact of governance consistency on knowledge collaboration, emphasizing the role of shared vision and goals.
In practical terms, innovation-oriented platforms should strive to balance relational and contractual governance, leveraging their respective strengths to foster a collaborative environment. Transaction-oriented platforms, on the other hand, should focus on the cost-efficiency benefits of contractual governance while ensuring adequate relational elements to maintain trust. Enterprises with high external knowledge acquisition needs should prioritize joining platforms that employ a hybrid of both governance models to maximize collaboration opportunities.
This study makes several notable contributions.(1) It clarifies the nonlinear effects of platform relational and contractual governance on knowledge collaboration, addressing gaps in traditional theories by providing a more nuanced understanding of their interplay. (2) By constructing a two-dimensional matrix, it explores the combined mechanisms of governance models on knowledge collaboration, offering a fresh perspective on how these models interact to drive collaboration. (3) It extends strategic consensus research to platform contexts, revealing its unique value in facilitating cross-organizational knowledge collaboration and examining the moderating role of platform openness, thereby broadening the scope of platform strategic consensus and openness research.
The study provides key managerial insights: First, platforms should flexibly choose governance models based on their core objectives (innovation or transaction), while enterprises need to dynamically adjust strategies to adapt to different governance impacts. Second, both platforms and enterprises should prioritize building strategic consensus, incorporating it into cooperation criteria and innovation decisions to enhance collaboration awareness and alignment. Third, improving collaboration efficiency through governance matching and consensus building is crucial, with platforms guiding and enterprises actively adapting to create a stable and efficient ecosystem for innovation and development. However, the study has limitations, and future research should explore more diverse governance models and other influencing factors to enrich understanding.