This paper explores reasons for negative complementarity among HRM practices. It is
built upon the premise that there are certain HRM practices influencing extrinsic and
intrinsic motivation of knowledge receivers. If those HRM practices are applied in a
complementary way, their impact on knowledge-related outcomes will result in
crowding effect of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and be negative. Hypotheses
derived from these arguments are tested on the data from 92 subsidiaries of Danish
multinational corporations located in 11 countries.
Extrinsic/intrinsic motivation, HRM practices, knowledge transfe
