Essays on knowledge sourcing and technological capability: A knowledge structure perspective

In today’s increasingly competitive and rapidly changing markets that depend heavily on innovation, firms are increasingly opt to use external knowledge sourcing strategies to complement their internal efforts in developing technological capabilities. While external knowledge sourcing strategy can bring substantial opportunities for new knowledge generation, it imposes huge challenges to the firms for successful integration of external knowledge, making appropriate execution of external knowledge sourcing strategies crucial. However, the literature and empirical evidence has not yet been able to offer a conclusive indication of what drives the performance variations of different firms in developing technological capabilities from sourcing knowledge externally. To address this under-explored question, this dissertation presents three empirical studies that examine the antecedents of the performance variations in developing technological capabilities through sourcing knowledge externally. By looking at firms’ external knowledge sourcing strategies in the three modes of governance with different levels of hierarchy (i.e. licensing, alliances, and acquisitions), the findings of this dissertation aim to improve our understanding of how external knowledge sourcing strategies can be better managed to develop technological capabilities.