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The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate knowledge replication-imitation speed differentials in the context of patents as the target knowledge.

This study analyzes patent citations in the electric digital data processing class employing an accelerated failure-time model.

This study finds that replicators can turn the private aspect of knowledge into an advantage against imitators with respect to the speed of knowledge transfer, even after the knowledge is codified in a patent. Specifically, being a replicator provides no knowledge transfer speed advantage over imitators. Instead, a joint consideration of knowledge characteristics and organizational boundaries is necessary when explaining knowledge replication-imitation speed differentials. Thus, “organizational advantage” in knowledge transfer is knowledge characteristic-specific rather than general.

This study illuminates the differential effects of organizational boundaries on knowledge transfer by investigating both replication and imitation in conjunction with each other, which has been a weakness in previous studies. This study also investigates knowledge transfer speed, another void in extant research.

Based on interdependence theory, the authors investigated the effect of reward interdependence (RI) on project professionals' knowledge hiding and examined the moderating role of knowledge tacitness (KT) and complexity, in the context of new product development (NPD) teams.

The authors conducted a time-lagged study in the context of NPD teams and collected data from a sample of 231 NPD professionals in China.

The study's findings indicate that RI was negatively associated with knowledge hiding. Knowledge tacitness negatively moderated the relation between RI and knowledge hiding. In contrast, the moderating effect of knowledge complexity (KC) was not significant.

To reduce NPD professionals' knowledge hiding, organizations should not only design incentive plans that cultivate interpersonal relatedness but also address the drawbacks (decreased effectiveness of group rewards) resulting from KT.

The authors' paper provides novel insights into the inconsistent understanding of organizational rewards' effectiveness in managing knowledge withholding by demonstrating the differentiated effects of individual and group rewards on knowledge hiding as well as the differential contingent roles of knowledge attributes.