How to poach the talents? Role of social capital and contextual knowledge base

Why do some talent mobility events succeed with big news while others result in silent failure? Recruiting experienced inventors is an important way for hiring firms to get information and reach external knowledge to gain a competitive advantage in the digital era. This research considers learning-by-hiring (LBH) to be a process of knowledge transfer from the recruit to the hiring firm and identifies the influential factors in this process. We develop an integrated model to depict the relationship among the social capital of the recruit, knowledge base of the hiring firm, and corresponding knowledge transfer performance. By combining PATSTAT and COMPUSTAT databases, we identify 25,618 interfirm mobility events. Empirical models are developed to examine the theoretical hypotheses. The analyses indicate that a firm can acquire more knowledge through hiring when they poach a recruit who has more individual social capital. Interestingly, the knowledge breadth of the hiring firm strengthens the positive effect of relational embeddedness and weakens the impact of structural embeddedness. Conversely, knowledge depth weakens the effects of relational embeddedness and strengthens the effects of structural embeddedness. This study advances our understanding of LBH, and also enriches the interplay between recruits and hiring firms from a knowledge transfer perspective.