Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/96585 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
ESMT Working Paper No. 13-09
Publisher: 
European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), Berlin
Abstract: 
The literature on organizational learning asserts that external learning is often limited geographically and technologically. We scrutinize to what extent organizations acquire external knowledge by accessing external knowledge repositories. We argue that professional service firms (PSFs) grant access to nonlocalized knowledge repositories and thereby not only facilitate external learning but also help to overcome localization. Focusing on patent law firms, we test our predictions using a unique dataset of 544,820 pairs of EP patent applications. Analyzing patterns of knowledge flows captured in patent citations we find that accessing a PSF's repository facilitates the acquisition of external knowledge. As the effect is more pronounced for knowledge that is distant to a focal organization we conclude that having access to a knowledge repository compensates for localization disadvantages.
Subjects: 
Learning
knowledge acquisition
localization
patent citations
professional service firm
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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