How Do Alliance Networks Affect Firms’ Capability of Influencing Technological Standardization? Configuration Analysis Based on the TOE Framework

Standardization alliance networks serve as crucial channels for firms to sponsor standards and access external resources, exerting a substantial impact on their standard-setting competitiveness and their ability to foster a sustainable innovation ecosystem. The technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework offers an integrated theoretical perspective for studying the causal recipes of how the technological composition, the network structure, and the environment features of standardization alliance network affect firms’ capabilities to dominate and support technological standardization. Based on the data of 88 vehicle manufacturers with experience in participating in standardization alliances, the results of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) show that: (1) large-scale networks with low density and high technological diversity can simultaneously explain firms’ high level capabilities to dominate and support standardization; (2) supporting standardization is highly dependent on network scale, as firms embedded in large-scale alliance networks with high technological diversity or proximity both enjoy advantages in supporting standardization; (3) dominating standardization shows relatively low dependence on network scale, a firm can enhance its standardization dominance by maintaining an alliance network with low technological proximity in institutional environment with high government intervention. Overall, this study contributes to the theoretical literature on cooperative standard-setting and provides managerial implications for firms looking to enhance capabilities to dominate and support standardization, thereby shaping sustainable technology trajectories and securing their long-term industrial competitiveness in a rapidly evolving technological environment.