Labor mobility from R&D-intensive multinational companies: implications for knowledge and technology transfer

The Journal of Technology Transfer - 2020
Jacob Rubæk Holm1, Bram Timmermans2,1, Christian Richter Østergaard1, Alex Coad3,4, Nicola Grassano5, Antonio Vezzani6
1Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
2Department of Strategy and Management, Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway
3Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), Lima, Peru
4CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School (CCGBS), Lima, Peru
5Unit B.3 Territorial Development, European Commission JRC Directorate B - Growth and Innovation, Seville, Spain
6Department of Economics, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy

Tóm tắt

Private sector R&D is largely concentrated in a few multinational companies (MNCs). The mobility of labor between these MNCs and the rest of the economy is therefore an important mechanism for the diffusion of knowledge and technology, but these flows are not without friction. This paper analyses in great detail the flow of labor between firms with specific emphasis on flows to and from R&D intensive MNCs. Using linked employer-employee data for Denmark, we match employees moving from R&D intensive MNCs to other employees switching jobs. We find that employees are more inclined to move between R&D intensive MNCs and their subsidiaries rather than between these firms and other firms in the economy. This is particularly true for high skill employees. Our results suggest that other domestic firms are to a larger extent kept out of the ‘knowledge spillover’ loop, which provides them with fewer opportunities to learn from the R&D intensive MNCs. In other words, R&D intensive MNCs and their subsidiaries form a kind of sub-labor market within the national labor market; employees exhibit higher mobility within this group of firms than between this group and the rest of the labor market.

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The Journal of Technology Transfer

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