The impact of stocks and flows of organizational knowledge on firm performance: an empirical investigation of the biotechnology industry
研究了生物技术行业中组织知识的存量（如专利、产品管线）和流量（如地理位置、联盟、研发支出）如何影响企业绩效，发现地理位置、产品管线和引用量是显著预测因素。
The knowledge-based view of the firm is a recent approach to understanding the relationship between firm capabilities and firm performance. Specifically, this approach suggests that knowledge generation, accumulation and application may be the source of superior performance. Other research has conceptualized organizational knowledge in terms of stocks of accumulated knowledge in the firm and flows of knowledge into the firm. This paper tests the relationship between stocks and flows of organizational knowledge and firm performance in the biotechnology industry. We suggest that a firm’s geographic location, alliances with other institutions and organizations and R&D expenditures are representative of knowledge flows, while products in the pipeline, firm citations and patents are indicative of knowledge stocks. Through factor analysis, we develop an aggregated measure of location from several variables. A regression model suggests that location is a significant predictor of firm performance as are products in the pipeline and firm citations. A major contribution of this investigation is the operationalization of geographic location and its statistically significant link to firm performance. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.