A multi-level study of technoparks within complex adaptive systemsperspective: A Case study of factors influencing R&D performance

Technoparks, an aggregate of organizations operating in various sectors, are founded for the purpose of raising university and industry cooperation and are centers for research and development of technology. The gathering of organizations in a technopark might help the organizations through their survival and might offer the organizations some benefits; however, not many studies have focused on the organizations themselves, but many on the technoparks as a whole. According to theliterature, being a complex adaptive system (CAS) brings about the ability to survive in the competitive and dynamic environment. Taking the case of the organizations located at technoparks, the question comes to mind that "does being complex and adaptive as a system along with being located at a technopark provide an advantage to an organization, here considering R&D performance, in real world as believed theoretically?" To research this, questionnaires were distributed among the employees of the four technoparks located at Ankara and the organizations they work at were investigated; first, for the CAS characteristics they have as the member of R&D performance cluster they belong to; and second, for the type of their relationships with other organizations in the same technopark, together with the type of governance which is in association with adaptive capacity, and finally, for the type of the economic agglomeration their technopark belongs to,which then may help to determine the relationship between the organization and the technopark. The results indicate that the high performer cluster of organizations show more complexity in terms of the number of job titles, along with more organizational adaptation except for the rules and regulations dimension, and also more non-constant rules of interactions. These findings will cast light on the CAS characteristics different R&D performers possess and if technopark as location is an advantage regarding the type of economic agglomeration it is.