The influence of internal barriers on external knowledge utilization

摘要: The ability of firms to benefit from external knowledge sources can be influenced by a variety of internal, firm-specific factors. While accessing external knowledge sources can enable firms to improve firm performance (Sampson, 2007; Lahiri and Narayanan, 2013, Laursen and Salter, 2006) such benefits are not self-speaking. In fact, various studies document substantial heterogeneity in the abilities of firms to reap the benefits from external knowledge sources (eg Cassiman and Veugelers, 2006; Kale and Singh, 2007; Rothaermel and Deeds, 2006). Existing literature has mainly explained this heterogeneity by focusing on how firms differ in the capabilities they possess to benefit from external knowledge sources, for example by means of dedicated alliances departments or interdependencies with internal technology investments (Heimeriks, Duysters and Vanhaverbeke, 2007; Noseleit and de Faria, 2013; Wassmer, 2010; Wuyts and Dutta, 2014; Antonelli and Colombelli, 2015). However, this stream of literature focusing strongly on enabling factors tends to be less concerned with internal barriers that may hamper enabling factors to function effectively and allow efficient knowledge transfer. While literature relating to the not-invented-here syndrome (Clagett, 1967; Katz and Allen, 1982; Agarwal at al., 2010) predominantly focuses on internal attitudes towards external knowledge, a broader conceptualization of internal barriers is missing. We believe that internal barriers associated to the internal structure of firms (like the existence of different functional or geographical units) or created by the strategic decisions of firms (like selective knowledge