Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources

Prithwiraj Choudhury

doi:10.1287/orsc.2017.1121

Abstract

Prior research has established a relation between intrafirm mobility and innovation outcomes at distributed organizations. The literature has also uniformly agreed on the mechanism underlying this relationship: the sharing of tacit knowledge and recombination of ideas that occurs because of intrafirm mobility. But a second mechanism may also be at work: intrafirm mobility might help distant employees secure access to resources for their innovative projects. Using unique data on travel, employment, and patenting for 1,315 inventors at the Indian research and development (R&D) center of a Fortune 50 multinational, I find that intrafirm mobility in the form of short-duration business trips from a distant R&D location to headquarters is positively related to higher subsequent patenting at the individual level. I also find mobility immediately prior to meetings at which R&D funds are most likely to be disbursed to be related to higher subsequent patenting. This study sheds new light on how intrafirm mobility and possible face-to-face interactions with those who allocate resources might affect innovation outcomes and the matching of resources to individuals within a distributed organization. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1121 .

Highlights

It is well established that mobility is related to innovation outcomes among engineers and scientists (Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Agarwal et al, 2004; Agarwal et al, 2009; Singh, 2005; Singh and Agrawal, 2011)
I first present results based on the test outlined in specification 1, which proposes that intra-firm mobility is positively related to innovation outcomes, i.e. the number of patents filed by individual inventors
When I decomposed the overall travel variable into dummies for different numbers of trips, I found that the result is driven by the first trip to headquarters

Summary

Introduction

It is well established that mobility is related to innovation outcomes among engineers and scientists (Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Agarwal et al, 2004; Agarwal et al, 2009; Singh, 2005; Singh and Agrawal, 2011). A nascent literature has documented that intra-firm mobility affects innovation outcomes in a distributed organization (Madsen et al, 2003; Singh, 2008; Lahiri, 2010; Karim and Williams, 2012). A second mechanism could be at work: intra-firm mobility might help distant employees within a distributed firm secure access to resources for their innovative projects, especially if the resources are allocated centrally at the headquarters. This mechanism has not been emphasized by prior studies linking intra-firm mobility and innovation. My primary research question is the following: does intrafirm mobility impact innovation outcomes through access to resources?

Methods

Results

Conclusion