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Should auld acquaintance be forgot? the reverse transfer of knowledge through mobility ties
Author(s) -
Corredoira Rafael A.,
Rosenkopf Lori
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
strategic management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 11.035
H-Index - 286
eISSN - 1097-0266
pISSN - 0143-2095
DOI - 10.1002/smj.803
Subject(s) - business , labor mobility , transfer (computing) , knowledge transfer , strong ties , industrial organization , interpersonal ties , social mobility , marketing , labour economics , knowledge management , economics , computer science , psychology , sociology , social psychology , social science , parallel computing
While mobility's effect on knowledge transfer to firms that hire mobile employees is well demonstrated, we choose to explore mobility's effect on knowledge transfer to firms that lose these employees. Focusing on this ‘outbound mobility’ allows us to isolate effects of social mechanisms associated with mobility. We find that semiconductor firms losing employees are more likely to subsequently cite patents of firms hiring these employees, suggesting that mobility‐driven knowledge flows are bidirectional. In addition, the outbound mobility effect is pronounced when mobility occurs between geographically distant firms, but attenuates for geographically proximate firms since other redundant knowledge channels exist within regions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.