Seeking legitimacy and learning: an exploration of KTOs’ engagement with associations to improve knowledge exchange

Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) play a central role in enabling technology and knowledge sharing. While the literature has extensively explored their institutional and organizational characteristics, their engagement in associations that support knowledge exchange remains underexplored. These associations, which we define as Knowledge Exchange Associations (KEAs), are crucial actors that foster KTOs' development by providing access to resources, learning opportunities, and institutional visibility. Drawing on interorganizational relationship literature, this study investigates how KTOs' engagement with KEAs evolves over time, and which mechanisms drive such evolution. We present a longitudinal case study of Netval, the Italian KEA for research valorization, relying on multiple sources, including interviews, archival data, and direct observations. Our findings identify two main drivers of KTOs’ engagement in KEAs (i.e., building legitimacy and searching for learning) and show how they vary across three evolutionary phases of the KEA: aggregation, consolidation, and impact.