【公开学术报告】Knowledge Sponges: Generalist Incumbents and Post-hiring Knowledge Integration

Topic: Knowledge Sponges: Generalist Incumbents and Post-hiring Knowledge Integration

Date & Time: 9:30-11:00am, Thur. 6^th, December 2018

Venue: Room 2101, Tongji Building A

Language: English

Speaker：Dr. TONG Di (Drexel University)

ABSTRACT

How can firms tap into the knowledge of recruited inventors and scientists? While past research presumes automatic diffusion and integration of recruits' knowledge upon hiring, recent empirical evidence shows the actual extent of recruitment on post-hiring knowledge integration is very limited. These findings prompt the need to search for other factors that drive post-hiring knowledge integration. In this paper we focus on human capital composition, particularly presence of generalist incumbents, as a potential explanatory factor. Drawing from the literature on generalist-specialist knowledge workers, we posit that, given the unique attributes of generalists, having proportionally more generalist incumbents facilitates several processes central to firm absorptive capacity. As such, recruits' knowledge is more likely to be integrated and utilized post-hiring. Using USPTO data, we exploit a set of R&D tax credit policies derive exogenous sources of variations in theoretical variables, and are thus able to identify the causal effects of generalist incumbents' presence on post-hiring knowledge integration. This approach is augmented with a matching design to provide robust identification. We find the overall effect that having proportionally more generalist incumbents indeed allow better integration and utilization of recruits' knowledge. In particular, this is likely due to increased collaboration among firm members, and greater ability to retain recruits' knowledge post-departure. Finally, generalist incumbents' are typically more helpful when dealing with new-to-firm knowledge. Our findings contribute to the learning-by-hiring literature as well as the literature on scientific human capital.