Marc Wouters

2022

Research and development (R&D) behavior is the source of innovation and an important driving factor for sustainable and stable development, gaining the core competitiveness of companies, and even promoting social and economic development. Many factors such as the high cost of R&D, the uncertainty of R&D returns, and financial restrictions of companies make R&D investment regarded as a scarce resource. Therefore, it is essential for companies that R&D investments are used as effectively as possible. R&D efficiency provides a good indication of how well R&D resources are used throughout the R&D process. In addition to macro factors external to the firm, which have been extensively researched in the literature, there are still some industry-based and firm-based factors that impact management's allocation of R&D resources and R&D performance. These have not been adequately addressed and studied in the existing literature. This paper provides a systematic literature review of the relationship between industry and firm-level factors and R&D efficiency. This paper focuses on 42 journal articles from 33 academic journals from 1994 to 2022, summarises eight categories of influencing factors, and examines the potential causes of the effects of these factors on R&D efficiency. On this basis, areas for future research are further discussed.