MORE STARS STAY, BUT THE BRIGHTEST ONES STILL LEAVE: JOB HOPPING IN THE SHADOW OF PATENT ENFORCEMENT

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ganco, Martin; Ziedonis, Rosemarie H.; Agarwal, Rajshree
• 署名单位: University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; University of Oregon; Stanford University; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.2239
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 659-685
• 关键词: employee mobility; intellectual property; INNOVATION; patent enforcement; STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

摘要

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 (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.