Human resources – strength and weakness in protection of intellectual capital

Purpose – Human resources in knowledge intensive industries create the basis for continuing innovation and subsequent firm performance. At the same time, they pose risks for the competitiveness of the firm: unwanted leaking of knowledge and intellectual capital to outsiders exposes firm-critical knowledge, and knowledge leaving with a departing key employee may jeopardise the firm’s projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine how human resource management can serve as a protection mechanism to diminish knowledge leaking and leaving via employees. Design/methodology/approach – The authors approach these issues through a case study utilising interview data from 22 interviews within two large research and development intensive firms. Findings – Human resources could be seen both as a strength and weakness of a firm with respect to knowledge protection. The findings indicate that there are numerous practices related to commitment, trust, motivation, and sense of responsibility available to deploy to str...

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