Neither invented nor shared here: The impact and management of attitudes for the adoption of open innovation practices

Despite the massive interest in open innovation, limited attention has been expressed concerning the intra-organizational challenges in implementing it. An exemplary issue is the unwillingness of employees to undertake extra-organizational knowledge transactions in the form of negative attitudes against the sourcing of external knowledge (the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome) and against the external exploitation of knowledge assets (the not-shared-here (NSH) syndrome). Using survey data collected from 331 firms, this article empirically assesses the theoretical assertion that the NIH and NSH syndromes have negative impacts on the adoption of inbound and outbound open innovation. Furthermore, it investigates how their effects can be reduced through competence-building programs based on the training of employees. By focusing on two attitudinal antecedents to openness, the findings offer an explanation for the problems that firms face in benefiting from inflows and outflows of knowledge and possible guidance as to how managers can disengage such attitudes.