Organizational learning in innovation-oriented public–private partnerships: A multilevel perspective

Abstract

Innovation-oriented public–private partnerships are central to collaborative innovation, yet we know little about how governmental involvement reshapes firms’ organizational learning. This article develops a multilevel framework explaining how governments—as collaborators and institutional rule makers—shape firms’ learning behavior. We argue that governmental participation operates through three governance mechanisms: changes in appropriability incentives, constraints on feasible governance instruments, and information credibility. These mechanisms shape learning across organizational, interorganizational, and population levels. Governments shift firms toward exploitation within public–private partnership domains while encouraging exploration beyond them, favor knowledge accessing over acquisition, and strengthen complementarities between experiential and vicarious learning. These effects are moderated by knowledge diversity, public–private knowledge overlap, and institutional quality. By integrating organizational learning with governance perspectives, this study explains how public institutions systematically configure firms’ learning in collaborative innovation.