Three essays on intellectual property and the managerial aspects of its protection and exploitation

This thesis presents three essays on intellectual property and the managerial aspect of its protection end exploitation. The first essay provides a systematic review of the empirical trademark literature with the goal to develop a framework that brings together different research streams. Despite its relative youth, this field of scholarly inquiry has already accumulated a critical mass of contributions that allow us to draw initial conclusions about the trademark lifecycle and its multifaceted impact on organisational functioning. Based on a systematic review of 64 academic papers containing some elements of empirical trademark analysis, five broad research areas have been identified, namely: the determinants of trademark deposits; the role of trademarks in differentiating product offerings; the relationship between trademarks and innovation activities; the strategic use of trademarks; and the impact of trademarks on firm performance. Overall, the analysis reveals that the performance-based perspective currently dominates the research landscape, with studies on trademark deposits and the trademark-innovation link to follow. At the same time, there is still relatively little known about the micro-foundations of a firm's trademarking behaviour; the complementary use of trademarks and other intellectual property rights, including its effect on value transference; and the performance implications of different trademark strategies. This essay accounts for these and other findings to outline directions for future research. The second essay focuses on the managerial aspects of intellectual property strategy. Often scholars refer to intellectual property protection as an auxiliary concept that assists in building up or proving an argument about the innovation process. By contrast, this research focuses on intellectual property strategy per se, placing specific emphasis on its managerial dimension. It adopts the upper echelons approach to examine the extent to which CEO characteristics contribute towards the variance in patent and trademark applications. Guided by the resource-based view of the firm, it suggests three areas of resource expertise – legal, scientific, and business – each of which is likely to have a distinct influence on how the chief executive perceives and subsequently responds to intellectual property issues. This proposition is further extended by incorporating the possession of general skills and the moderating role of proactive personality in the overall conceptual framework. The empirical analysis of a sample of 848 CEOs in 261 U.S. publicly-traded companies over the period 1992-2013 generally confirms the contention that executive characteristics are an important determinant for predicting the outcomes of intellectual property strategy. As such, the study reinforces the ongoing academic debate on the need to account for the managerial aspect when considering the strategic decision processes. The third essay offers an extensive analysis of how executive demography affects differentiation strategy. Previous studies of competitive strategy have provided some support for aligning CEO personality traits with product differentiation. This essay suggests further refinement of these findings and extends them by considering a wider range of managerial characteristics proposed in subsequent research. By integrating the upper echelons perspective with the hierarchical view of strategy, this work also draws attention to channels through which chief executives influence organisational outcomes. It particularly argues that along with direct involvement, decisions made by the CEO regarding corporate strategy will affect the extent of product differentiation, too. The empirical testing is based on a sample of 821 chief executives in 259 U.S. publicly traded companies over the period 1992-2013. Using trademarks to measure product differentiability, this research has demonstrated that executive tenure, age, education, functional experience, monetary incentives, CEO duality, and the founder and owner statuses – all this is statistically significant for explaining variations in differentiation strategy across companies, even after when firm and industry-specific effects are controlled for. Furthermore, it has also been shown that chief executives leverage different characteristics, depending on the type of involvement and the strategy level at which they make decisions. By confirming CEO biases that guide product differentiation, this research also contributes to the broader discussion on the importance of accounting for human interpretation in the strategy making process