Foreign knowledge acquisition through inter-firm collaboration and recruitment: Implications for domestic growth of emerging market firms

•This paper focuses on two mechanisms through which firms acquire foreign technological and managerial knowledge—collaboration with foreign firms and recruiting returnees, and examines to what extent the two mechanisms benefit emerging market firms in terms of their performance in the local market.•We propose that the differences in institutional origins of emerging market firms affect the extent to which they can benefit from the two mechanisms.•Our findings show that privatized state-owned firms benefit more from collaboration with foreign firms, while entrepreneurial firms benefit more from recruiting returnees. Also, the positive impact of foreign collaboration was reduced by the presence of returnees in the top management team.