The Impact of acquisitions on the productivity of inventors at semiconductor firms: a synthetis of knowledge-based and incentive-based perpectives

Deskripsi

Firms competing in R&D-intensive industries are increasingly acquiring other firms as a means of obtaining new technological knowledge. We show how the knowledge-based and incentive-based perspectives complement each other to explain the effect of acquisitions on the productivity of inventors from acquired firms. Incentive-based theories account for their lower productivity relative to inventors at non-acquired firms, while both perspectives jointly explain why their productivity converges to that of inventors from the acquiring firm. We also find that higher productivity is achieved when there is greater overlap in routines, moderate overlap in skills, and when the acquired firm has a large relative size as compared to the acquiring firm. This paper clarifies the subtle manner in which incentives and the knowledge-based view are intertwined..Printed journal