This paper focuses on latecomers in technology standards alliances, a topic that has received limited attention in academia. Although latecomers have disadvantages in terms of technology and market access, they possess a strong desire to catch up technologically. As a fundamental characteristic of an alliance, alliance routines serve as a source of innovation for members and a basic unit of analysis, providing a new perspective for understanding and researching the technological catch-up of latecomers. In this paper, a questionnaire survey is conducted among 83 latecomer enterprises in a technology standards alliance. The survey covers strategic emerging industries, such as new energy, new-generation information technology, new materials, and high-end manufacturing. Then, hierarchical regression is performed for hypothesis testing. The research shows that the three dimensions of alliance routines significantly promote the utilization of technological catch-up by latecomer enterprises. However, the impact on the exploration technological catch-up varies, where the action logic promotes exploration technological catch-up while implicit norms hinder exploratory innovation with an inverted U-shaped impact. The absorptive capacity strengthens the positive impact of the three alliance routines on the exploitative innovation of latecomer enterprises and strengthens the inverted U-shaped relationship between mutual consensus and their exploratory innovation. Nonetheless, it fails to play a significant regulatory role in action logic or in the relationship between implicit norms and exploratory innovation of latecomers.

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