THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF FIRM’S R&D COLLABORATIONS ON THEIR INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE

There is the need for firms to engage in R&D collaborations with different partners because these collaborations enable them to acquire new knowledge and technologies thereby increasing their innovation capabilities. These innovative collaborations are known to increase firm’s innovative performance, but the extent of the increase is not known. The main objective of this paper is to empirically examine the mediating role of firm’s R&D collaborations and its influence on their innovative performance. To fulfil this objective, we used the Structural Equation Model and firm-level data from the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey (2010-2012). Our results have demonstrated that firms R&D collaborations was a statistically significant determinant that played a full mediating role in contributing to increase firm’s innovation performance by 27%. Our results have demonstrated that firm’s innovation collaborations rather had a weaker effect on their innovation performance. Additionally, knowledge sources also influenced firm’s collaborations, it had a stronger effect. Conversely, knowledge sources were not statistically significant in influencing firm’s innovation performance, it rather had an unsubstantial effect on innovation performance.