How do foreign firms patent in emerging economies with weak appropriability regimes? Archetypes and motives

被引:56
作者
Keupp, Marcus Matthias [1 ]
Friesike, Sascha [1 ]
von Zedtwitz, Maximilian [2 ]
机构
[1] Univ St Gallen, Inst Technol Management, CH-9000 St Gallen, Switzerland
[2] Tongji Univ, Chinese German Sch Postgrad Studies CDHK, Res Ctr Global R&D Management, Shanghai 200092, Peoples R China
关键词
Intellectual property; Emerging economy; China; Appropriation; Patent; Appropriability regime; INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY-RIGHTS; RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT; TECHNOLOGY-TRANSFER; CHINA; PROTECTION; SPILLOVERS; PRODUCTIVITY; STRATEGIES; US; MULTINATIONALS;
D O I
10.1016/j.respol.2012.03.019
中图分类号
C93 [管理学];
学科分类号
12 ; 1201 ; 1202 ; 120202 ;
摘要
Foreign firms patent in emerging economies with weak appropriability regimes at an increasing rate. This phenomenon constitutes a paradox since in such a setting foreign firms should have weak incentives to patent. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, we conducted an inductive analysis of 11 foreign firms that patent in such a setting, using the case of China as our empirical context. We identify four archetypes of foreign firms and three key antecedents the interaction of which determines which archetype a firm can be subsumed under. Our study complements the developed-economy focus of the extant appropriation literature by adding an international perspective. We extend previous econometric studies by identifying salient factors on the firm level that determine the extent to which a foreign firm patents in emerging economies with a weak appropriability regime, highlighting that the extent of a firm's motivation to maintain its freedom to operate can supersede imitability concerns. We also comment on the practical implications of these contributions for managers of foreign firms. Highlighting a structural conflict of interest between foreign firms from developed economies and the development goals of an emerging economy, we point to the generalizability of our results to a wide range of other emerging economies worldwide. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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页码:1422 / 1439
页数:18
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