| The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how and when the hiring of experienced scientists affects a hiring firm's search for knowledge and technological positions, and how much influence scientists exert, by studying the conditions under which their influence varies. I argue and demonstrate that mobility decreases search in the neighborhood of existing knowledge (i.e., 'local-search'), and increases search for new knowledge (i.e., 'exploration') as well as the transfer of prior knowledge and experience rooted in the hired scientist. The results further indicate that although hiring a scientist may serve as a fast means to access and acquire new knowledge and capabilities, this effect decays rapidly. These results refute the long standing assumption that hiring talent can provide long term competitive advantage. Existing theory supports the view that transfer of similar knowledge is more influential than transferring dissimilar knowledge. My findings, however, suggest that significant technological repositioning comes from hiring a scientist from a distant technological position relative to the adopting firm's position. Furthermore, I find the mobile scientist's impact on significant technological repositioning decreases with larger R&D teams, and more concentrated R&D processes, as well as when a scientist is hired from a direct competitor. Finally, while a firm's life-cycle stage and size have a direct effect on its propensity to change, they have no significant bearing on mobility effect. These results propose that by excluding team and process level variables from the study of the context to which one enters, and focusing on firm level variables, prior studies models were probably mis-specified. The implications of my study for the knowledge-based view and learning theories are discussed. |
