Does stronger intellectual property rights protection matter in developing local R&D outsourcing strategy?

This study examines whether the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the host countries has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between local R&D outsourcing strategy and subsidiary productivity. Due to the subsidiary mandate in the host country being categorized as exploitation-orientation or exploration-orientation, we further examine whether there is a different moderating effect for different types of a subsidiary mandate. This analysis takes advantage of the data-set on Taiwan-based subsidiaries and the IPR indices by the World Economic Forum over the 2006-2009 period. The empirical results show that a stronger degree of IPR protection is, on average, found to play a significant moderating role in the influence of R&D outsourcing strategy based on local collaboration relationships. Interestingly, the moderating effects are found to differ between exploitation-orientation and exploration-orientation.