Three essays on intrafirm R&D employees and knowledge production

Abstract

Given that new technology can be produced by recombining existing technologies, knowledge production can be regarded as the recombinant process in which inventors (or R&D employees) recombine existing technological knowledge by sharing their knowledge and collaborating with each other. Building upon the knowledge recombinant perspective, this dissertation consists of three essays that study the factors affecting intrafirm R&D employees’ ability to produce new knowledge by recombining existing knowledge. The first essay argues that each firm’s training for its R&D employees can enable them to better utilize its accumulated technological knowledge and to produce new knowledge more efficiently. The first essay further suggests several firm- and industry-specific characteristics that affect the positive moderating effect of R&D employee training. The second essay decomposes the accumulated technological knowledge of each firm into radical knowledge and incremental knowledge according to technological novelty and shows the differential effects of the two types of accumulated knowledge on firm R&D productivity. Further, the second essay suggests that the differential effects of the two types of accumulated knowledge can be strengthened or weakened by the structure of intrafirm R&D employees collaboration networks. The third essay shows that, if employee mobility barriers are established exogenously, mobility barriers change R&D employees’ incentives and behaviors regarding knowledge sharing and collaboration, thereby reducing firms’ overall innovation performance. The third essay further suggests that the negative effect of employee mobility barriers can be mitigated or exacerbated by the structure of intrafirm R&D employees collaboration networks.