APPROPRIABILITY AND THE RETRIEVAL OF KNOWLEDGE AFTER SPILLOVERS

作     者：Alnuaimi, Tufool George, Gerard 

作者机构：Imperial Coll London Imperial Coll Business Sch London England Singapore Management Univ Lee Kong Chian Sch Business Singapore Singapore 

出 版 物：《STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL》 (战略管理杂志)

年 卷 期：2016年第37卷第7期

页      面：1263-1279页

核心收录：

学科分类：12[管理学] 120202[管理学-企业管理（含：财务管理、市场营销、人力资源管理）] 1202[管理学-工商管理] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 

基　　金：UK's Economic and Social Research Council [RES-051-27-0321] 

主　　题：appropriability technological complexity coupling knowledge retrieval patents innovation 

摘      要：Research summary: Firms create and capture value through innovation. In technology-driven firms, there has been an explicit emphasis on appropriability through imitation deterrence and cumulative inventions that build on prior firm innovation. We introduce systematic empirical evidence for a third mechanism of appropriability namely, knowledge retrieval, which is defined as the re-absorption of previously spilled knowledge. We extend previous studies which consider technological complexity and organizational coupling as predictors of appropriability by examining their impact on knowledge retrieval. We find that technological complexity has a curvilinear relationship with retrieval while organizational coupling has a negative relationship. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of absorptive capacity, organizational design and appropriability of innovation. Managerial summary: It is a widely held assumption that knowledge should be protected and held tightly within the firm to ensure value creation and value capture. The implicit recognition is that knowledge spillovers, or knowledge leakage, is detrimental to performance. By examining the patterns of citations among patents of 142 semiconductor firms, we study how organizational structure and technological complexity play a role. We find that moderate technological complexity improves appropriability. If imitation deterrence is paramount, then the optimal structure would be a tightly-coupled organization. In other instances, loosely-coupled organizations may be superior because they foster internal cumulative innovations and, if spillovers were to occur, they also maximize knowledge retrieval. Our findings suggest that all is not lost when spillovers occur and that firms can continue to benefit in downstream innovations. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.