Drawing on the theoretical foundations of attitudes and their role in the decision process underlying open innovation (OI) adoption, this study conveys a new perspective of examining firm-level openness as a construct. Based on Item Response Theory, a family of latent trait models rooted in psychology, and using data from the German section of the Community Innovation Survey, we advance a nuanced measure of openness capturing the firm-level attitudes toward external knowledge reception, going beyond current measures focusing on its attributed effects. This approach, based on an implicit attitude measure, allows us to assess the types of OI practices characterizing firms with different value structures (i.e., higher/lower attitudes toward external knowledge), thus offering a more reliable comparison of firms along the openness continuum. A systematic comparison with the widely used measures of external search breadth and depth shows that higher openness is not merely reflected by a higher number (or a more intensive use) of external knowledge sources but by a higher attitude toward complex search patterns, typically implying more challenging OI activities. The proposed construct has strong external validity, as it reflects the key theoretical features of openness and its paradoxes - an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance. The results of this study provide both theoretical and practical implications.

借鉴态度的理论基础及其在采用开放式创新 (OI) 的决策过程中的作用，本研究传达了一个新的视角，将公司层面的开放性视为一种结构。基于项目反应理论，一个植根于心理学的潜在特征模型家族，并使用来自社区创新调查德国部分的数据，我们推进了一种微妙的开放性衡量标准，捕捉企业层面对外部知识接受的态度，超越当前措施侧重于其归因效应。这种基于隐性态度测量的方法使我们能够评估具有不同价值结构的公司的 OI 实践类型（即对外部知识的较高/较低态度），从而提供更可靠的公司在开放性方面的比较连续体。与广泛使用的外部搜索广度和深度度量的系统比较表明，更高的开放性不仅反映在外部知识源的数量更多（或更密集的使用）上，而且反映在对复杂搜索模式的更高态度上，通常意味着更多具有挑战性的 OI 活动。所提出的构念具有很强的外部有效性，因为它反映了开放性及其悖论的关键理论特征——与创新绩效的倒 U 形关系。这项研究的结果提供了理论和实践意义。