Boundary-Crossing Job Mobility Gina Dokko UC Davis, Graduate School of Management OSWC XIX February 9, 2013

Job mobility as a way of spanning knowledge communities Your experiences make you who you are and determine what you can do – Participants in knowledge communities hold knowledge, and are also embedded in the social and cognitive worlds of their communities – Carry this stuff when they move But you can’t escape from your past – Individuals carry cognitive and behavioral baggage when they move Frame job mobility or career history as boundary- crossing events that enable individuals to span or connect knowledge communities – Whether they want to or not

Questions What’s being carried? – Knowledge, social ties, norms, mental models – Heterogeneity in experience? What are the outcomes? – Learning, social networks, innovation, performance – For individuals, firms, nations – Can job mobility overcome challenges of sharing knowledge over distance? What boundaries? – Org, occupation/profession, industry, other knowledge communities? – How do these boundaries interact?

Challenges Cross-level effects Teasing apart knowledge, social ties, other stuff Gathering and coding career history

Boundary-Crossing Job Mobility, New Product Area Entry and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Ventures (Dokko & Wu) Entrepreneurial leaders come to new ventures with experience – Serial entrepreneurs: direct experience – But for many, it’s their first venture, but not their first work experience Aside from direct experience in founding firms, how does their prior experience affect the outcomes of their new ventures? – “Related” experience, but what bundle of knowledge and skills matters to entrepreneurship? – Industry and functional boundary crossing

Sample of multi-industry high tech firms (CorpTech) Identify mobility events: people moving from one CorpTech firm to another Proportion of industries that differ (CorpTech product codes at the industry level) Proportion of functional responsibilities that differ (CorpTech functional areas)

Crossing different types of KC boundaries has different effects Industry boundary-crossing – Negatively associated with startup performance – Not associated with entry into new product areas – But it does appear to enable IPOs (if the firm doesn’t fail) Functional boundary-crossing – Positively associated with entry into new product areas – Not associated with startup performance

Thank you 8