Hüseyin Tanriverdi
Associate Professor
McCombs School of Business
University of Texas at Austin
Friday, March 20, 2015
10:00am – 11:30am Speakman Hall 200
Seminar Title: THE IMPACTS OF HIERARCHY VERSUS DIGITAL PLATFORM ON KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND APPROPRIATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR FIRMS AND EMPLOYEES
Abstract
This presentation will focus on a major challenge faced by knowledge-intensive firms and knowledge workers: how to create new knowledge and also appropriate profits from it. Firms and their knowledge workers often battle over who owns employee-created knowledge and who is entitled to profit from it even when employment contracts clearly state that the firm is the legal owner of all employee-created knowledge. The presentation will cover cumulative findings from a program of research on the causes, consequences, and potential mitigation mechanisms of knowledge ownership disputes between firms and their knowledge workers. The findings indicate that strategies used by hierarchical mode of governance foster either the knowledge creation objective of the firm or the knowledge appropriation objective, but not both simultaneously. They also indicate that the emerging, digitally-enabled platform mode of governance could address the knowledge creation / appropriation dilemma of firms better than the hierarchy. The presentation will also address this dilemma from the perspective of knowledge workers. It will present a recent study comparing knowledge creation and appropriation behaviors of two groups of mobile app develops: one group works as salaried employees of software firms while the other group works as independent software developers who develop mobile apps for digital platforms in return for a share of sales or ad revenues. Preliminary findings indicate that, relative to hierarchy, digital platform better motivates knowledge workers to create new knowledge. But digital platform also increases knowledge workers’ territoriality over knowledge, and increases legal disputes over knowledge ownership and profit sharing arrangements of the platform. Collectively, the findings imply that while the emerging digital platform mode of governance could address the knowledge creation / appropriation dilemma of firms better than the hierarchy, it creates more challenges for knowledge workers who see digital platforms as an alternative work form for making a living.