Inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) has gained increased attention in research and practice given its documented influence on the innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs). Regardless of the growing number of studies, there is still lack of research that scrutinizes and synthesizes this body of knowledge. This paper undertakes a systematic review of 113 studies from 2000 to 2019 to analyze research trends and findings on the nature and dynamics of IOC-innovation relationship in SMEs domain. Based on this analysis, we develop a framework grounded in selected theoretical lenses and empirical findings to advance our understanding of key antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes. We highlight that extant theories are deployed and illustrated but rarely extended in a manner that significantly informs subsequent work. Furthermore, we identify that innovation is a complex process that involves different mechanisms. On that basis, we have identified several research gaps and provided a future research agenda that we mapped into four dimensions: theory, phenomenon, methodology and context.

中文翻译：

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组织间协作与中小企业创新：系统回顾与未来研究方向

组织间协作 (IOC) 在研究和实践中受到越来越多的关注，因为它对中小企业 (SME) 的创新产生了有据可查的影响。尽管研究数量不断增加，但仍然缺乏仔细审查和综合这一知识体系的研究。本文对 2000 年至 2019 年的 113 项研究进行了系统回顾，以分析关于中小企业领域 IOC 与创新关系的性质和动态的研究趋势和发现。基于这一分析，我们开发了一个以选定的理论视角和实证结果为基础的框架，以促进我们对关键前因、中介因素、调节因素和结果的理解。我们强调现有的理论被部署和说明，但很少以对后续工作有重大影响的方式进行扩展。此外，我们认为创新是一个涉及不同机制的复杂过程。在此基础上，我们确定了几个研究差距，并提供了未来的研究议程，我们将其映射到四个维度：理论、现象、方法论和背景。