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M&As, Human Mobility and Joint Knowledge Creation in High-technology Industries : 하이테크 산업에서 인수합병, 인적이동 그리고 공동지식창출

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Authors

이정환

Advisor
박남규
Major
경영대학 경영학과
Issue Date
2013-02
Publisher
서울대학교 대학원
Keywords
M&AsHuman mobilityJoint knowledge creationMobility directionIntellectual assetsRelational assets
Description
학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 경영학과 경영학 전공, 2013. 2. 박남규.
Abstract
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&As) and human mobility are strategic management tools to acquire new knowledge and capabilities in high-tech industries. Previous studies on the association between M&As and innovative outputs exhibited mixed findings. They investigated aggregate knowledge creation through knowledge transfer between the acquiring firms and the targets at the firm level. However, they only focused on the organization viewing inter-organizational knowledge transfer and creation and overlook the importance of the individuals who comprise the organization and have tacit knowledge. Meanwhile, studies on human mobility focused on the change in innovative output or knowledge transfer between organizations according to individual mobility. However, in these studies, there was no change in the on-going business of the focal firms before and after human mobility. Thus, they did not consider changes in organizational identities such as M&As after human mobility. By combining literatures on M&As and human mobility, this research not only investigates M&As at the individual level to complement the M&A literature, but also suggests the effects of human mobility on knowledge creation at the firm level. Furthermore, this research identifies mobile engineers knowledge creation after M&As at the individual level.
The first empirical research is to investigate the effects of organizational antecedents on joint knowledge creation through human interaction among engineers in the acquirer and the target after M&As. The study was conducted in terms of organizational, relational and post-M&As characteristics. In terms of organizational characteristics, the M&As experience of the acquirer has a significant effect on joint knowledge creation in a positive way, while that of the target has an effect in a negative way. This study claims that such significant opposite effects are caused by a difference in M&As experience, leading to a difference in organizational learning accumulated in the two organizations, since the value of descriptive statistics is significantly greater for the M&As experience of the acquirer. In terms of relational characteristics, significant results show that there is more joint knowledge creation when there is closer geographical proximity and greater technological similarity. In terms of post-M&As-related characteristics, the results also show that joint knowledge creation will decrease when a change in the targets organizational identity occurs immediately after an M&A. This means that a rapid change in an organization leads to confusion and de-motivation among organization members and thus negatively affects joint knowledge creation.
The second empirical research is to investigate the effects of mobile engineers between two companies before M&As on joint knowledge creation. We predicted that mobile engineers in the focal firms involved in M&As at the firm level will play an important role as agents of joint knowledge creation since they experienced both organization routines involved in the M&A. However there are no significant results showing the relationship between the number of mobile engineers in two companies and joint knowledge creation. Nevertheless, the firm-level intellectual and relational assets that mobile engineers accumulated in their previous firms have positive impacts on joint knowledge creation. Among mobile engineers, there are two types of mobility direction: workers who moved from the acquirer to the target and vice versa. After analyzing the relative contribution of different mobility direction, this study shows that both the number and the firm-level intellectual assets of mobile engineers from the acquiring firm to the target make greater contributions to joint knowledge creation compared to the number and firm-level intellectual assets of engineers who moved from the target to the acquirer. Nonetheless, there is no difference in the contribution made between firm-level relational assets with different mobility direction. This shows that relational assets are important in maintaining strong relationships and increasing joint knowledge creation regardless of mobility and mobility direction.
The third empirical research is to investigate joint knowledge creation of individual-level mobile engineers who have existed before the M&A when there is change in an organization such as an M&A. We argued that, compared to those who moved from the target to the acquirer, mobile engineers who moved from the acquirer to the target lead to more increases in joint knowledge created by collaborating with other engineers at their previous organizations. Furthermore, we found that the interaction effects between the mobility direction and the intellectual and relational assets of mobile engineers have a positive association with joint knowledge creation. It is shown that the mobility direction from the acquirer to the target creates greater interaction effects than the mobility direction from the target to the acquirer.
Based on three empirical studies, this research strengthened the basis of studies on knowledge creation brought about by the cooperation of individual engineers from two organizations after an M&A. We could also show that mobile engineers in two organizations before an M&A play an important role of an agent or a channel in joint knowledge creation after the M&A and that the joint knowledge creation of mobile engineers are also affected by a change of organizational identity such as M&As.
Language
English
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10371/119340
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