Value creation in university‐firm research collaborations: A matching approach

University‐based technological opportunities are often exploited through joint corporate and academic entrepreneurship activities such as university–industry research collaborations. This paper explores the partner attributes that drive the matching of academic scientists and firms involved in these relationships. The paper models the formation of firm–faculty partnership as an endogenous selection process driven by synergy between partners' knowledge‐creation capabilities. The main findings indicate that faculty–firm matching is multidimensional: firms and scientists complement each other in publishing capabilities but substitute each other in patenting skills. Furthermore, firms and scientists with specialized knowledge create more value by teaming with more knowledge‐diversified partners. The paper contributes to the literature on university–industry knowledge transfer and, more generally, to the literature on alliance formation.     

Experience matters: The role of academic scientist mobility for industrial innovation

Research Summary: A learning‐by‐hiring approach is used to scrutinize scientists' mobility in relation to the recruiting firms' subsequent innovation output. Our starting point is that among firm hires, individuals with university research experience—hired from universities or firms—can be particularly valuable. However, conflicting institutional logics between academia and industry makes working with academic scientists challenging at times for firms. We suggest two solutions to this difficulty: hiring “ambidextrous” individuals with a mix of experience of university research and working for a technologically advanced firm, and a strong organizational research culture in the recruiting firm reflected by the presence of a scientist on the top management team. We track the mobility of R&D workers empirically using patent and linked employer‐employee data. Managerial Summary: An important way to make organizations more innovative is hiring individual researchers with the right types of skills and experience. We show that individuals with university research experience beyond their final degree are particularly likely to help boost firm‐level innovation output after hiring compared to R&D workers with other types of skills and experience. However, to obtain good returns to innovation from hiring such individuals, firms need a university research–friendly organizational culture when hiring individuals with university research experience, from either firms or academia.     

More stars stay,but the brightest ones still leave: Job hopping in the shadow of patent enforcement

Competitive advantage often rests on the skills and expertise of individuals who may leave for rival organizations. Although institutional factors like non‐compete regimes shape intra‐industry mobility patterns, far less is known about firm‐specific reputations built through patent enforcement. This study formally models and empirically tests how a firm's prior litigiousness over patents (i.e., its reputation for IP toughness) influences employee mobility. Based on inventor data from the U.S. semiconductor industry, we find that litigiousness not only diminishes the proclivity of inventive workers to “job hop” to others in the industry, it also shifts the distribution of talent released to the market. The study contributes new insights linking firm‐level reputations as tough legal enforcers to the “stay versus exit” calculus of knowledge workers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Explains the Union Membership Gap between Migrants and Natives?

This article explores the differences in unionization rates between migrant and native‐born workers in 23 European countries. It explores whether individual characteristics or contextual factors explain the variation across countries in the degree of trade unions’ inclusion of migrant workers. The analyses show that individual characteristics cannot explain the variation in the difference between migrant and native unionization rates. Characteristics of the industrial relations regime in the country of destination, in particular the institutional embeddedness of trade unions, affect the likelihood that migrants join trade unions as compared to native workers.     

Communication Flows in International Product Innovation Teams

Recently, we have witnessed a strong growth in the internationalization of many firms' product development activities. However, the lack of attention devoted by scientific research to the management of international innovation contrasts sharply with the importance attached to it as a cornerstone of international business success. Although several empirical studies and normative theories have specified the communication requirements in innovation teams, an empirically based insight is definitely needed on the communication requirements and requirements that prevail in the complex context of international innovation teams, in which the participants are located in different company units, countries, and cultures. This article addresses the following research question: viewing international innovation as an interfunctional activity, what are the communication requirements an international innovation team is facing, and what are the communication capabilities (interface mechanisms) that may be adopted to initiate, develop, and launch the new product effectively and efficiently? An extensive case study research project was designed to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework. Over a two year time period, the research team has investigated selected innovation projects in four European multinational corporations. The analysis of the case study data suggests five requirements that determine the effectiveness and efficiency of communication in international product development teams: network transparency, knowledge codification, knowledge credibility, communication cost, secrecy. To cope with these communication requirements, organizations may create firm level capabilities (parallel structures, cross‐functional and inter‐unit climate, communication infrastructure, goal congruence) and team level capabilities (core team, team leadership, formalization, procedural justice). The evidence from the in‐depth case study research indicates that these mechanisms provide a parsimonious and powerful approach to address the communication requirements in international product innovation teams. After the information processing framework proposed by Tushman and Nadler [124], the adoption of these mechanisms is expected to improve innovation effectiveness. This holds important consequences for the management of international product innovation projects. First, the innovating firm must balance centralization and decentralization, employ formal as well as informal strategies, and integrate ad‐hoc and permanent strategies. Second, it highlights the critical role of the project leader. Given the fact that companies often select the most available person, rather than the best person for the job, the allocation of light weight project leaders may create heavyweight problems in international teams. Third, following the argument in favor of procedural justice, the absence of involvement may severely hinder cross‐functional commitment to international innovation projects. Fourth, the innovating firm must also actively manage the communication flows with external parties. Failure to do so may result in flawed specifications, and a limited understanding about product design and market strategies.     

Exploring the Motivational and Behavioral Foundations of External Technology Experts’ Knowledge Sharing in Collaborative R&D Projects: The Contingency Role of Project Formalization

High‐tech manufacturers increasingly rely on the knowledge contributions of external technology experts (ETEs), who contribute to collaborative R&D projects on behalf of suppliers. Many scholars have considered knowledge sharing in R&D collaborations from a firm‐level or project‐level perspective and focused on formalization as a potential remedy. While individual supplier employees at the operative level make the decision to share critical knowledge, the individual‐level perspective in literature on knowledge sharing in collaborative R&D projects is virtually nonexistent. Because knowledge sharing in collaborative R&D is a largely discretionary act on behalf of the supplier employee, personal motivations rather than inter‐firm relationship elements (e.g., network position or dependency) become the primary determinant of one’s sharing behavior. Abstracting from or ignoring these motivations of supplier employees in studies on collaborative R&D may obscure important insights for R&D managers. This study is an important first step in providing the empirical evidence needed to uncover the motivational and behavioral foundations for ETEs’ knowledge sharing in a collaborative R&D setting. Building on theories of gift and social exchange, this article identifies customer stewardship and distributive fairness as two important personal motivations of ETEs to share knowledge. Project formalization is considered as a key contingency condition. Analyzing survey responses of 186 ETEs, a multilevel regression‐based moderated‐mediation analysis of direct and indirect effects shows that customer stewardship predicts an ETE’s knowledge sharing behavior under (very) low levels of project formalization, and distributive fairness predicts knowledge sharing behavior under medium to high levels of formalization. Together, the results provide R&D project managers who aim to leverage external knowledge contributions with valuable insights that have been obscured in past firm‐level collaborative R&D studies.     

Increase in takeover protection and firm knowledge accumulation strategy

Research summary : We argue that the extent to which a firm faces takeover threats affects its knowledge structure. In particular, takeover threats may lead to managers' reluctance to adopt a strategy toward firm‐specific knowledge accumulation because implementing this strategy requires them to acquire specialized skills, which are at risk under takeover threats. Conversely, takeover protection leads to an increase in firm‐specific knowledge. Further, the relationship between takeover protection and firm‐specific knowledge is positively moderated by managerial ownership, which helps align managerial interests with those of shareholders. But the relationship is negatively moderated by managerial tenure, as long‐tenured managers have already committed to their firms. Using a differences‐in‐differences method with Delaware antitakeover rulings in the mid‐1990s as an exogenous shock, we found results supporting these arguments. Managerial summary : We examined how changes in the Delaware antitakeover rulings in mid‐1990s affected the knowledge structure of firms incorporated in Delaware. We reasoned that with a greater level of takeover protection, top managers of those firms incorporated in Delaware felt higher job security, thus providing them stronger incentives to make strategic decisions toward the development of firm‐specific knowledge and to make corresponding human capital investments in specialized skills. Empirically, firms incorporated in Delaware were found to have an increase in the level of firm‐specific knowledge in their knowledge structure after the mid‐1990s. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the role of takeover protection on top manager incentives is particularly salient when the managers are awarded with more company shares and when the managers have shorter organizational tenure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employee Mobility and Interfirm Relationship Transfer: Evidence from the Mobility and Client Attachments of United States Federal Lobbyists, 1998–2014

Research summary : Employee mobility can erode competitive advantage by facilitating interfirm knowledge and relationship transfer. This study investigates the latter and identifies factors that influence the likelihood of its occurrence. Using a novel database that tracks the employment and client attachments of U.S. federal lobbyists, I show that repeated exchange with employees (firms) increases (decreases) the likelihood clients follow employees who switch firms. Structurally, multiplexity reduces the likelihood of client transfer and weakens the effect of employee–client repeated exchange, with the multiplexity effect strongest when team members have specialized expertise. By examining the main and interactive effects of repeated exchange, multiplexity, and specialized human capital, this study extends prior work by demonstrating how individual, organizational, and structural relationship characteristics affect client transfer and retention ex‐post employee mobility . Managerial summary : When do clients follow employees who switch firms? What can firms do to guard against it? These questions are important in service‐based industries where clients may become loyal to individual employees within the firm rather than to the firm itself. This study provides evidence that helps practicing managers: (a) identify which clients are most at risk of defecting if employees exit, and (b) structure relationships in ways that mitigate the likelihood that employee exit results in client loss. Findings suggest that a client is more likely to defect when she has extensive history working with the exiting employee, particularly if the employee was the sole link between the client and firm. Managers, however, can reduce the risk of client loss following employee exit by structuring relationships so that clients work with teams of employees rather than exclusively with an individual and by increasing the degree of specialization within these teams . Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do foreign entrepreneurs benefit their firms as managers?

Research summary: The entrepreneurship literature has extensively studied an individual's decision to found a new venture, but it has little to say about the individual's choice to operate this venture personally or hire an agent. This decision is particularly challenging for foreign entrepreneurs, who, in addition to traditional factors, such as agency costs and personal preferences, need to take into consideration the benefits and liabilities of foreignness. Using novel data on foreign entrepreneurial firms and instrumenting for the owner‐manager choice with a visa policy change, we find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance. Our results further suggest that foreign owner‐managers reduce operating costs but have no effect on the firm's productivity and growth. Managerial summary: Immigrants represent a significant part of the population in the United States and Europe and are often more entrepreneurial than local nationals. However, a person starting a firm in a foreign country faces unique challenges. One important choice that a foreign entrepreneur has to make is whether to operate the firm personally or hire a local agent. Foreign entrepreneurs are often believed to be worse managers because they have limited local knowledge and skills. However, our results point to the contrary: We find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance by decreasing firms' operating costs. This happens because foreign owner‐managers often have access to unique resources, higher work incentives, and superior management skills acquired at home. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity

Research summary : In this study, we build on the micro‐foundations perspective and investigate how individual characteristics contribute to the development of firm absorptive capacity. In particular, we assess how individual learning goal orientation affects firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Furthermore, we study how individuals' civic virtue acts as a micro‐level social integration mechanism that moderates the effect from firm realized absorptive capacity to potential absorptive capacity. Using the multilevel structural equation modeling technique and data from 871 core‐knowledge employees nested in 139 high‐technology firms, we find support to our major hypotheses. Together, this study finds support for the micro‐foundations' perspective and generates novel insights on how individual‐level factors could be linked with firm‐level heterogeneity in absorptive capacity. Managerial summary : We study how employees' characteristics contribute to a firm's absorptive capacity, that is, the ability of a firm to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment. Because firms have increasingly tapped into external resources to foster innovation over the past two decades, absorptive capacity is crucial to firm learning and success. Using data from 871 core‐knowledge employees in 139 high‐technology firms, we find that individual employees' learning goal orientation, the tendency to seek improvements in employees' competence and to understand or master new things advances the development of a firm's potential and realized absorptive capacity. More important, individual employees' civic virtue, the discretionary involvement in company issues, serves as a social integration mechanism that reduces the gap between firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Subcontracting,Posted Migrants and Labour Market Segmentation in Finland

Using evidence from the shipbuilding and construction industries in Finland, this article shows how trade union responses to the introduction of migrant workers can be conditioned by product markets. Growing numbers of ‘posted workers’, or intra‐European Union work migrants employed via transnational subcontractors, are segmenting the labour market, by competing with domestically domiciled workers whose employment is more tightly regulated. In Finland, the construction worker's union has had a far more assertive and successful approach to enforcing wage norms than the union in shipbuilding. This appears to be related to the greater exposure of shipbuilding to international product market competition.     

Cutting the Gordian knot: The effect of knowledge complexity on employee mobility and entrepreneurship

Employee entrepreneurship and employee moves to rival firms (employee mobility) have both been recognized as critical drivers of the transfer of knowledge. Drawing on a unique database of intra‐industry inventor entrepreneurship and mobility events in the U.S. semiconductor industry, I examine the effect of the complexity of inventors' prior patenting activities on their decisions to join a rival firm or found a start‐up. The findings show that even though complexity inhibits knowledge diffusion to rival firms through employee mobility, complex knowledge may be underexploited within existing organizations and may still flow to startups through employee entrepreneurship. This study sheds new light on how technology shapes patterns of employee entrepreneurship and mobility, with implications for knowledge flows and competitive dynamics.     

Individual performance in a coopetitive R&D alliance: motivation,opportunity and ability

This study examines individual knowledge sharing in a coopetitive R&D alliance. R&D is increasingly carried out in an R&D alliance setting, where individuals share highly specialized tacit knowledge crossing firm boundaries. A particular challenging setting is the coopetitive R&D alliance, where partner firms partially compete and individuals may leak competitive knowledge. This setting has been studied on the level of the partner firm. We want to deepen insights by examining the individual level. Drawing on the motivation‐opportunity‐ability framework, we study the influence of individuals’ job experience (ability) on their performance in the alliance. We also examine effects of two‐ and three‐way interactions between job experience, a central position in the social alliance network (opportunity) and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We find a positive association of job experience with individual performance, a positive interaction between job experience and extrinsic motivation and a positive three‐way interaction between job experience, central network position and intrinsic motivation, and discuss the impact of these findings.     

Migration and child development during the food price crisis in El Salvador

Migration is often used as parts of both ex post and ex ante strategies to mitigate risks to household incomes. There is little empirical evidence, however, of the way that migration actually helps households in times of shocks. In this paper, I describe how the peak of the worldwide food price crisis affected anthropometric statistics among young children in El Salvador, and how households with access to international migrants were not affected as negatively as households without such access. In 2008, El Salvador experienced food price inflation of 15%, and the evaluation of Red Solidaria, El Salvador’s conditional cash transfer program, shows that height-for-age (HAZ) Z scores among children under 3 years old declined by 0.2 standard deviations on average. In this paper, I use the Red Solidaria evaluation data to assess whether children in households with access to remittances or international migrants were better off than households without access to migration income. Using both repeated cross-sectional data and individual panel data, I find that as theory would expect, children in households with access to international migrants have much lower declines in their HAZ scores.     

What Makes a Family Firm Innovative? CEO Risk‐Taking Propensity and the Organizational Context of Family Firms

Investigating the new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms connects two important topics that have recently received considerable attention in innovation and family firm research. First, new product portfolio innovativeness has been identified as a critical determinant of firm performance. Second, research on family firms has focused on the questions of if and why family firms are more or less innovative than other organizational forms. Research investigating the innovativeness of family firms has often applied a risk‐oriented perspective by identifying socioemotional wealth (SEW) as the main reference that determines firm behavior. Thus, prior research has mainly focused on the organizational context to predict innovation‐related family firm behavior and neglected the impact of preferences and the behavior of the chief executive officer (CEO), which have both been shown to affect firm outcomes. Hence, this study aims to extend the previous research by introducing the CEO's disposition to organizational context variables to explain the new product portfolio innovativeness of small and medium‐sized family firms. Specifically, this study explores how the organizational context (i.e., ownership by top management team [TMT] family members and generation in charge of the family firm) of family firms interacts with CEO risk‐taking propensity to affect new product portfolio innovativeness. Using a sample of 114 German CEOs of small and medium‐sized family firms operating in manufacturing industries, the results show that CEO risk‐taking propensity has a positive effect on new product portfolio innovativeness. Moreover, the analyses show that the organizational context of family firms impacts the relationship between CEO risk‐taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness. Specifically, the relationship between CEO risk‐taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness is weaker if levels of ownership by TMT family members are high (high SEW). Additionally, the effect of CEO risk‐taking propensity on new product portfolio innovativeness is stronger in family firms at earlier generational stages (high SEW). This result suggests that if SEW is a strong reference, family firm‐specific characteristics can affect individual dispositions and, in turn, the behaviors of executives. Therefore, this study helps extend the knowledge on the determinants of new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms by considering an individual CEO preference and the organizational context variables of family firms simultaneously.     

How anticipated employee mobility affects acquisition likelihood: Evidence from a natural experiment

This study draws on strategic factor market theory and argues that acquirers' decisions regarding whether to bid for a firm reflect their expectations about employee departure from the firm post‐acquisition, suggesting a negative relationship between the anticipated employee departure from a firm and the likelihood of the firm becoming an acquisition target. Using a natural experiment and a difference‐in‐differences approach, we find causal evidence that constraints on employee mobility raise the likelihood of a firm becoming an acquisition target. The causal effect is stronger when a firm employs more knowledge workers in its workforce and when it faces greater in‐state competition; by contrast, the effect is weaker when a firm is protected by a stronger intellectual property regime that mitigates the consequences of employee mobility. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multilevel perspective on knowledge transfer: evidence from the Chinese automotive industry

We adopt a multilevel perspective to study the transfer of collective and individual knowledge. By making a clear theoretical distinction between collective and individual attributes in concepts such as knowledge, teaching approach, and absorptive capacity, this study extends the knowledge transfer literature and provides fresh insights into the ways in which collective and individual knowledge are transferred. Based on a survey of the capability transfer activities of 161 engineering units of multinationals in the Chinese automotive industry, we empirically validate the distinction between individual and collective teaching activities and absorptive capacity. More importantly, we find that the largely underexplored collective‐level mechanisms, such as collective teaching and collective absorptive capacity, are more effective in transferring both collective knowledge and individual knowledge in comparison to their individual‐based counterparts. Our findings also have important implications for management of multinationals and international joint ventures, particularly in emerging economies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Migration and food consumption patterns in Ghana

This paper examines the link between migration and food consumption patterns in Ghana, which has a history of widespread migration and high levels of poverty. Data from 4130 households from the nationally representative 2005/2006 Ghana Living Standards Survey are used for the analysis. Since migrants self-select into migration, an instrumental variable approach is taken to analyze the relationship between migration and total food expenditures per capita, food expenditures across a range of food categories and shares of food expenditures across these categories. Overall, the results indicate that migration does not substantially affect total food expenditures per capita, and has minimal noticeable effect on food expenditure patterns. Looking at results in different settings, the analysis indicates that only in high migration regions does migration appear to increase overall food expenditures resulting in a shift towards the consumption of potentially less nutritious categories of food, such as sugar and beverages and eating out of the home. The results raise questions about the value of migration for improving the food consumption of migrant sending households.     

What does it take to make the most of supplier relationships?

The supply context of companies has changed substantially during the past two decades because of outsourcing, globalisation and digitalisation, and through growing concern for sustainability and public procurement. These changes, combined with recognition of the potential benefits to be derived from more extensive involvement with suppliers, have made the task of purchasing and supply management broader and more complex. This paper's aim is to examine how the evolving supply context affects the scope of purchasing and supply management and what the consequences for management are. We argue that effective use of supplier relationships involves three main issues – interacting in supplier relationships, dealing with supply network interdependences and handling dynamic changes in the supply context. Coping with these matters requires: (i) conceptual tools that support monitoring and sense-making of what is on-going at the supply side of the firm; (ii) the individual and organisational skills and capabilities required to develop workable solutions; and (iii) organisational arrangements to support the development of these solutions.     

Pricing process as a capability: a resource‐based perspective

Strategists following the resource‐based view argue that firms can generate rents through value creation. To create value, firms develop and use resources and capabilities that other firms cannot imitate, trade for, or substitute other assets for. Even a firm that has created value, however, may not capture the potential rents associated with that value. To capture rents, a firm must set the right prices for what it sells. Most views of pricing assume that a firm can readily set appropriate prices. In contrast, we argue that pricing is a capability. To develop the ability to set the right prices, a firm must invest in resources and routines. We base our argument on a study of the pricing process of a large Midwestern manufacturing firm. We show that pricing resources, routines, and skills may help or inhibit a firm in setting the right price—and hence in appropriating value created. Our view of pricing as a capability contributes to the resource‐based view because it suggests that strategists should consider the portfolio of value creation and value appropriation capabilities a firm uses to create competitive advantage. Our view also contributes to economics because it suggests that strategic decisions about pricing capabilities have important implications for a fundamental economic action, determining prices. Managers in firms without effective pricing processes may be unable to set prices that reflect the wishes of its customers, so the customers may misuse their resources. As a result, resources may be used ineffectively. Our view of pricing as a capability therefore takes the resource‐based‐view straight to the heart of what is perhaps the central economic question: the best use of resources. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.