Collaborations that hurt firm performance but help employees’ careers
研究发现，企业与竞争对手共享同一合作伙伴会损害企业绩效，但员工能借此建立社会资本、促进职业流动，揭示了企业与员工在合作中的利益冲突。
Abstract Research Summary When a firm and a competitor collaborate with the same partner, they compete for the shared partner's resources and attention. Such “peer competition” has been shown to negatively affect a firm's access to resources and its performance. One might expect that also the employees’ careers to suffer as a result. However, we argue that the firm's employees benefit from such collaborations. They leverage these collaborations to build social capital—helping their mobility and careers. We find empirical support for our theory using a large sample dataset of video game companies. Our study points to an important yet hitherto neglected agency conflict: employees seek interfirm collaborations that benefit them personally but hurt their firm. Managerial Summary We show that some alliances can be detrimental to a firm's performance yet can benefit its employees. Specifically, we find that collaborating with the same partner as a competing firm hurts firm performance but can be leveraged by employees to advance their careers—by using the opportunity to connect with competing firms and find better job opportunities. We also find that firms often take on more collaboration than is good for them but entering many collaborations can benefit employees. Our study shows that the interests of firms and their employees are not always aligned when it comes to interfirm collaborations.