Interfirm collaborations can raise a fundamental dilemma. To create value, collaborators may have to adopt a variety of practices to facilitate knowledge transfer. Deploying these practices may increase the likelihood that economically valuable knowledge, which is (1) beyond the scope of the collaboration, and (2) difficult to legally protect, is expropriated. How can firms manage this dilemma? The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the veracity of a chain of propositions addressing this dilemma based on a novel joint knowledge-based view|transaction cost economics framework. A plausible chain of relationships is briefly summarized and explored in detail empirically using unrelated datasets. The chain links two knowledge-based attributes of collaboration-knowledge tacitness and problem-solving complexity-to the use of knowledge management practices-high-bandwidth communication channels and co-specialized communication codes. These practices are economic responses to knowledge-sharing difficulties as measured by tacitness and complexity. Increasing knowledge transparency via knowledge management practices, however, gives rise to opportunism hazards, which are safeguarded against via economizing governance choice. Our empirical effort examines the effects that two knowledge attributes of collaborations have on governance choice, first directly and then indirectly through the intervening linkages. Empirical results from both datasets indicate substantial support for the proposed chain of relationships. The results are provocative in that they offer the first preliminary evidence for a plausible reconciliation of two perspectives previously treated exclusively as adversaries. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper presents a set of relationships that have the potential to reconcile the dispute between the knowledge-based view of the firm (KBV) and transaction cost economics (TCE). Several KBV scholars have argued that governance choice need rely only on bounded rationality and not on opportunism where TCE scholars maintain that both behavioural assumptions are needed to explain governance choice.We help to resolve part of the debate by developing an extension ofTCE to encompass certain knowledge-based attributes of transactions.We argue that high-levels of two knowledge transfer attributes - knowledge tacitness or problem solving complexity - lead to the adoption of the knowledge management practices - high-bandwidth channels or idiosyncratic communication codes - to economize on the cognitive limitations of man. It is these knowledge management practices that generate contracting hazards for whichTCE, and its attendant concern about opportunism, predicts equity-based collaborations are superior to non-equity-based collaborations.The linkages between knowledge transfer attributes, knowledge management practices, and governance choice add value via implications for managers which are not readily apparent from either theory alone.Interfirm Collaborations, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer, Governance Choice,

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract