The Dilemmas of MNC Subsidiary Transfer of Knowledge

Jens Gammelgaard, Ulf Holm and Torben Pedersen

Chapter 10 in Knowledge Flows, Governance and the Multinational Enterprise, 2004, pp 195-207 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract To an increasing extent, the success of multinational companies (MNCs) is considered to be contingent upon the ease and speed by which valuable knowledge is disseminated throughout the organization (Hedlund, 1986; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989; Gupta and Govindarajan, 1991). Thus, creation of knowledge in a spatially dispersed multinational organization and tapping into advanced local knowledge wherever it can be found are necessary conditions for success in the global marketplace. The implication is that some subsidiaries are supposed to act as bridgeheads (Forsgren et al., 1999) that tap into knowledge created in a local context and subsequently transfer the knowledge to other MNC units where it is of better use. Therefore, some subsidiaries will or ought to have a strategic role in the global organization that reaches beyond their local undertakings (e.g. Gupta and Govindarajan, 1994; Holm and Pedersen, 2000). However, there are obstacles to the internal transfer of knowledge in the MNC, and a number of dilemmas unfold within those subsidiaries that are supposed to ensure internal knowledge transfer.

Keywords: Knowledge Transfer; Knowledge Creation; Multinational Corporation; External Knowledge; Knowledge Flow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230523876_10

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