When the paradox of openness meets the paradox of ability-willingness: family ownership and open innovation partnerships

Although it is of great significance to investigate the paradox of openness in family firms, there remains a lack of research on how it differs when family firms engage in open innovation with different types of partners. By distinguishing open innovation with market- and science-based partners, this paper investigates the direct impact of family ownership on these two types of partnerships and the moderating role of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and political ties. Based on the ability-willingness paradox framework, we hypothesize that family ownership has an inverted U-shaped impact on market-based partnerships while positively impacting science-based partnerships. In addition, the turning point of the relationship between family ownership and market-based partnerships shifts to the right with greater IPR protection or stronger political ties. The positive impact of family ownership on science-based partnerships is strengthened by IPR protection and political ties. These hypotheses are tested using a sample of 649 manufacturing family firms in China. We clarify why and how both the openness and ability-willingness paradox change when family firms collaborate with different open innovation partners and under varying institutional contexts.