Multilevel institutional analyses of firm benefits from R&D collaboration

•National collaborative logics affect the benefits a firm will derive from publicly sponsored R&D collaboration.•In higher collaboration logics, firms will see greater advances in organizational and product/technology development.•However, these firms will see lesser network benefits when they operate in countries with greater collaboration logics.•Collaboration logics may be fostered by design of innovation policy, and by encouraging knowledge-revealing practices. Open innovation research has extensively shown that open innovation strategies influence firms’ performance. It has, however, mostly neglected that the larger institutional context may influence these benefits. To address this gap in the literature, we investigate how the national institutional context influences the benefits a firm may derive from R&D collaborations. Building on institutional theory, we propose that in a national institutional context, a specific collaboration logic develops, underpinned by the design of policy support for innovation as well as knowledge-revealing practices amongst firms. This collaboration logic influences the ability of firms to benefit from R&D collaboration. We theorize that these effects occur due to the influence of national collaboration logics on the nature of firm interaction and organization for innovation. Relying on multilevel analyses of data on 601 European firms, we find that in countries where collaboration logics have been fostered by policy design and knowledge-revealing practices, firms attain greater organizational and product development benefits from R&D collaboration, but relatively lesser networking benefits. We discuss the policy implications of these results.