Disclosure or Concealment? The Protective Effect of Knowledge Embeddedness on Enterprises’ Knowledge Disclosure

Su Mengyue, Ma Hao

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 46, Issue 12, pp. 3 - 19 (2024)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20230718.101

Summary

For the purpose of resisting opponent imitation and organizational learning, enterprises may proactively, voluntarily, and selectively engage in knowledge disclosure, referred to as strategic “knowledge disclosure”. This paper analyzes the embeddedness motivation and moderating factors of enterprises’ knowledge disclosure behaviors. Using patent data from the pharmaceutical industry, the study finds that enterprises’ knowledge disclosure is protected by knowledge embeddedness. Internal embeddedness pertains to the interdependence of knowledge elements within the enterprise, while external embeddedness relates to the interdependence between internal knowledge and external knowledge elements. Furthermore, the protective function of internal embeddedness is amplified by the relational capital of the respective knowledge inventors. Conversely, as the ultimate owners of knowledge, enterprises’ relational capital within alliance networks weakens the positive role of external embeddedness in knowledge disclosure.

Keywords

knowledge disclosure; knowledge embeddedness; knowledge networks; relational capital; textual ambiguity