Corporate Science and Voluntary Disclosure

The dissertation investigates the phenomenon of firms that make voluntary contributions to the stock of scientific knowledge. Such a firm behaviour appears counterintuitive from a traditional viewpoint, since no direct financial returns can be expected while the disclosure of research outcomes may lead to knowledge spillovers to competing firms. This raises the questions why firms engage in those boundary-spanning activities, how scientific disclosure strategies are implemented, and to what extent scientific disclosure strategies affect the firm performance. The dissertation provides empirical evidence on these questions using representative firm-level data and econometric analysis techniques. The first chapter of the dissertation reviews the relevant literature, underlines the relevance of doing research on this topic by providing descriptive evidence on the amounts of scientific contributions by firms, and includes some novel insights from interviews which I conducted at several large R&D performing firms. I discuss the potential benefits, costs and organizational challenges of scientific disclosure strategies and position scientific publications as an expression of openness in the light of alternative openness definitions prevalent in innovation research. The second chapter focuses on the question why firms publish in scientific journals using a cost-benefit framework. In particular, I analyse whether scientific contributions of firms are used as an instrument to get access to academic knowledge networks. Moreover, I explore environmental conditions by considering the effectiveness of appropriation instruments and the spillover levels in a sector that may impact the firms’ decision-making process. The analysis relies on data from the French Innovation survey and provides evidence for the predictions that firms show reciprocal behaviour in exchange of obtaining valuable academic knowledge. However, the propensity of firms to publish is rather sensitive to the spillover threats. The third chapter examines how are firms able to publish by testing the requirements and origins of scientific contributions by firms. I explicitly consider the heterogeneity of scientific outputs and provide a complementary view on the requirements for the creation of inventive outcomes. The requirements considered can be classified according to the research orientation and the demographic composition of the R&D labs. The analysis revealed that scientific disclosure strategies require specific resource allocations and capabilities, which are in part not necessary for the generation of inventive outcomes. The findings support the view that disclosure strategies can be costly and are not only a by-product of the “usual” R&D activities. The fourth chapter addresses the performance effects of scientific activities of firms. More specifically, I examine whether scientific publications stocks provide valuable information to the financial markets, potentially leading to different valuations. I consider the heterogeneity of scientific and inventive outcomes and found evidence for a positive impact of scientific contributions on the firm’s Tobin’s Q beyond the effects of R&D stocks, patent stocks and patent quality.