Effects of knowledge spillover on inter-organizational resource sharing decision in collaborative knowledge creation

Collaborative knowledge creation is important for firms to gain new competitive advantages, but knowledge outgoing spillover harms their existing competitive advantages, which puts them into a dilemma when investing R&D resources. This study formalizes and investigates this dilemma using the Stackelberg leader–follower framework. Through our analyses, we find that, (1) current knowledge creation efforts and prior knowledge are substitutable in collaborative knowledge creation, and through controlling the ratio of current knowledge creation efforts to prior knowledge invested, the leader and the follower can gain benefits from collaboration and restrict knowledge outgoing spillover simultaneously; (2) because the leader invests resources first and faces moral hazards, it has the incentives to participate in collaborative knowledge creation only when its benefits from collaborative knowledge creation fruits and knowledge incoming spillover are bigger than those of the follower, and the more moral hazards it confronts, the more it demands; (3) the leader and the follower invest resources at ratios consistent with the benefits and costs the resources bring to them if they can determine the amount, or the collaboration is unstable.