Transferring knowledge in MNCs: The role of sources of subsidiary knowledge and organizational context

By N. J. Foss, Torben Pedersen. 2002

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We link up with the recent literature on the differentiated MNC and in particular with its stress on intra-MNC knowledge flows. However, rather than focusing on the characteristics of knowledge as determinants of knowledge transfer within MNCs, we focus instead on levels of knowledge in subsidiaries, the sources of transferable subsidiary knowledge and on the organizational means and conditions that realize knowledge transfer as the relevant determinants. We find largely positive support for the relevant hypotheses. These are tested on a unique dataset on knowledge development in subsidiary firms [the Centre of Excellence (CoE) project].

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20a98a6ea2c8dc4cb201bb6534f9b01d307ef7bb

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Sustainable Supply Chain Management in "Base of the Pyramid" Food Projects - A Path to Triple Bottom Line Approaches for Multinationals? (2013, background): “Pushing a global environmental strategy might be especially difficult since ecological issues often are to a high degree location-bound and context-specific (Foss and Pedersen, 2002) or require advanced technologies (Tsai and Child, 1997) that might not be available and affordable in a BoP context.”
Knowledge transfer in multinational corporations (2007, result): “The findings are in line with previous work of Galbraith (1973) and Egelhoff (1993).”
Parent Company Benefits from Reverse Knowledge Transfer: The Role of the Liability of Newness in MNEs (2011, background): “Similarly, the intensity of exposure to a corporate vision and shared norms (i.e., the number of years that a particular subsidiary has been operating within the MNE network) provides a subsidiary with experience in dealing with internal relationships (Foss & Pedersen, 2002; Li, 2005).”
Managing Knowledge Transfer in Mncs: The Impact of Headquarters Control Mechanisms (2004, background): “, Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000), few efforts have been made to examine the influence of organisational mechanisms on knowledge sharing within the MNC (Foss and Pedersen, 2002).”
Physical attraction and the geography of knowledge sourcing in multinational enterprises (2011, background): “For subsidiaries to become competence-creating it has been shown that they must become more closely embedded in local networks in their own immediate environment (Birkinshaw and Hood, 1998; Andersson and Forsgren, 2000; Foss and Pedersen, 2002; Cantwell and Mudambi, 2005).”
Cultural differences and capability transfer in cross-border acquisitions: the mediating roles of capability complementarity, absorptive capacity, and social integration (2007, background): “Research has also uncovered a range of barriers to interunit capability-sharing across MNC units (e.g., Szulanski, 1996; Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Foss and Pedersen, 2002; Schulz, 2003).”
Capital Structure, Environmental Dynamism, Innovation Strategy, and Strategic Risk Management (2005, background): “Multinationality can also be conceived as a form of innovation strategy where international diversity is used to create new growth options that extend the strategic opportunities available in different national markets (Grant, 1996; Foss and Pedersen, 2002).”
A formal analysis of knowledge combination in multinational enterprises (2004, methodology): “Our approach differs from existing literature because we do not conceptualise knowledge flows as flows of a ‘commodity’ called knowledge between subsidiaries (Foss and Pedersen, 2000; Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000).”
Knowledge transfer in multinational corporations: Productive and counterproductive effects of language-sensitive recruitment (2014, background): “Marketing and sales functions (on a par with production) are shown to have the highest level of competence among subsidiary functions (Foss & Pedersen, 2002) and arguably lend themselves to particularly well on knowledge transfer research in MNCs (Schlegelmilch & Chini, 2003).”