Gone are the creatures of yesteryear? On the diffusion of technological capabilities in the ‘modern’ MNC

Katarina Blomkvist, Philip Kappen and Ivo Zander

Journal of World Business, 2017, vol. 52, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: This paper probes the extent to which the rise of the ‘modern’ multinational corporation (MNC) has come with significantly altered patterns in the emergence and diffusion of technological capabilities across units of the MNC network. It draws upon a database containing the complete U.S. patenting history of 24 Swedish multinationals over the 1946–2008 period, which allows us to trace both the emergence and subsequent intra-firm diffusion of technological capabilities throughout the post-war period. The findings show that, over time, foreign subsidiaries have become an increasingly important source of new technological capabilities within the MNC network, and also indicate that the overall pace of capability diffusion has become faster over the observed time period. Notably, however, the results reveal substantial heterogeneity of individual firms’ approaches to organizing and managing technological capabilities within the MNC network. The relationship between evolutionary change and strategic choice emerges as a continually relevant issue in the organization and management of technology in the modern MNC.

Keywords: Technological capabilities; Diffusion; Longitudinal; Multinational corporations; Foreign subsidiaries; MNC network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951616301298
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:worbus:v:52:y:2017:i:1:p:1-16

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 620401/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2016.10.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of World Business is currently edited by David Collings and Jonathan Doh

More articles in Journal of World Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().