Resumo

Although an extensive number of studies has highlighted the importance of inter-organizational relationships for organizational innovation (Hung, 2017; Radziwon & Bogers, 2018) and for corporate results (Rungsithong, et al., 2017) and a large number of researches have emphasized the relevance of interactions with universities (Chen & Lin, 2017), and outras instituitions,few studies have focused on the analysis of the role of intermediation of support institutions and the systematization of attributes that allow the influence of this intermediation on organizational performance.

The present study aims to identify the influence of relations with support institutions on innovativeness and organizational performance. The question that this study sought to answer is: what is the influence of relationships with supporting institutions on the innovativeness and performance of organizations?

The interrelationships and position of the organization in the network consist of aspects that affect the innovative development (Shu, et al., 2018). However, increasing the number of connections, disregarding the diversity of the actors involved, can create inefficient arrangements, which generate information and resources with high redundancy, minimal diversity, and expressive costs (Baum, et al., 2000). The support institutions act as intermediaries of inter-organizational relationships (Watkins et al., 2015), facilitating the mediation between indirect contacts (Cui et al., 2018).

It is worth mentioning the role of universities, highlighting the importance of this type of support institution in the transfer of knowledge and technology, in access to resources, in capital development in stimulating innovation, and expanding the likelihood of related organizations to maximize their performance (Hameed, et al., 2019). In addition, the wide investigation of public organizations, incubators, and business development centers, both acting in the intermediation between stakeholders, in the provision of services, and in development of organizations' competitiveness (Chung, 2019).

It was possible to identify that the network approach is the main theoretical basis that underlies the analyzed context; organizational performance measures involve four categories: financial, commercial, operational, people and corporate performance. It was proposed that the relationship with support institutions enhances organizational performance, access to non-redundant contacts and innovativeness; in addition, non-redundant contacts influence innovativeness, and this strengthens organizational performance.

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