Abstract
We adopt an organizational learning approach to examine how firms’ recruitment of high-skilled migrants contributes to subsequent firm-level innovation performance. We argue that due to migrants’ often different experience from that of native high-skilled workers, their perspectives on problemsolving and access to non-overlapping knowledge networks will also differ. The implied complementarity between these worker types makes migrant hires a particularly valuable resource in the context of firm-level innovation. We hypothesize also that since the acculturation costs are relatively low for high-skilled migrants while the innovation-related benefits deriving from diversity are relatively high, innovation performance should increase a fortiori if the high-skilled migrant employees are from a dissimilar culture. Finally, we conjecture that firms with high integration capacity as a function of prior experience of employing high-skilled migrants should derive more innovation-related benefits from migrant hiring than firms with a low integration capacity. We track the inward mobility of high-skilled workers empirically using patents and matched employer-employee data for 16,241 Dutch firms over an 11-year period. We find support for our hypotheses.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Publication date | 2019 |
Number of pages | 33 |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Event | DRUID19 Conference - Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark Duration: 19 Jun 2019 → 21 Jun 2019 Conference number: 41 https://conference.druid.dk/Druid/?confId=59 |
Conference
Conference | DRUID19 Conference |
---|---|
Number | 41 |
Location | Copenhagen Business School |
Country/Territory | Denmark |
City | Frederiksberg |
Period | 19/06/2019 → 21/06/2019 |
Internet address |