The Effects of Human Mobility on Joint Knowledge Creation in High-technology M&As

This study examines how human mobility between two companies before M&As affect joint knowledge creation. We investigate the effect of mobility direction and human assets on joint knowledge creation by using the data of all 182 M&As events and 693 mobile engineers for the period 1973-2009. 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. This study also 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 direction.