Cross-organizational knowledge acquisition through flexible hiring and joint R&D: Insights from a survey in China

In this paper, we suggest that flexible hiring and joint research and development are two ways to acquire outside knowledge resources, which facilitate inter-organizational knowledge sharing and enable firms to overcome the constraints of internalized knowledge search in their innovation processes. We conducted a survey of 182 firms in Xi’an, China, which indicates that the majority of the surveyed firms have realized the importance of acquiring outside knowledge resources, and they are adopting flexible hiring policy and joint R&D strategy to make good use of outside knowledge resources. We then explore whether the two ways facilitate cross-organizational knowledge acquisition and inter-organization knowledge sharing, and hence contribute to effective innovations. We find that flexible hiring and joint R&D are effective ways to employ outside knowledge resources. Moreover, the effectiveness of innovations increases with both ways. These findings show that organizations can acquire outside knowledge resources to improve their innovations through flexible hiring and joint R&D.