Knowledge sourcing from advanced markets subsidiaries: political embeddedness and reverse knowledge transfer barriers in emerging-market multinationals

Francesco Ciabuschi, Lingshuang Kong and Cong Su

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2017, vol. 26, issue 2, 311-332

Abstract: This article focuses on emerging-market multinationals and their intent to source knowledge from advanced countries. A single in-depth case study of a Chinese state-owned multinational is used to shed light on the relationship between political embeddedness and the potential to reverse knowledge transfer from advanced market subsidiaries. Specifically, we argue that a strong home-country political embeddedness enhances specific organizational barriers to reverse knowledge transfer, which undermines the strategic intent of knowledge-seeking internationalization, common to much Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by emerging-market multinationals in recent years. This article contributes to research on knowledge sourcing within the context of south-north FDI by highlighting specific effects of political embeddedness at organizational level, which are critical for the possibilities to reverse knowledge transfer; our study is also relevant to international business, as new empirical insights related to the international organization and management of state-owned multinationals are discussed.

JEL-codes: L6 M16 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtx001 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:indcch:v:26:y:2017:i:2:p:311-332.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().