Intellectual Property and Knowledge Leakage: Two Sides of the Same Construct?

Multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) very existence is closely related to taking advantage of differences in knowledge and expertise around the world in terms of both exploiting existing repositories of knowledge and combining them to create new knowledge (Kogut & Zander, 1993). While co-creating, sharing, and combining knowledge, MNCs may find that their knowledge leaks outside their firm boundaries. Alerting managers to the risk of knowledge...