Business Commons^™

Organizational Structure And Knowledge-Practice Diffusion In The Mnc, Nathaniel C. Lupton, Paul Beamish

Faculty Publications

Purpose

This study aims to examine the interaction of formal and informal cross-border knowledge-sharing practices of four large multinational corporations (MNCs) in aerospace, software, IT services and telecommunications industries. The goal was to determine the manner in which coordination and control mechanisms facilitated knowledge transfer.

Design/methodology/approach

Case studies comprised secondary data and semi-structured interviews with corporate headquarters and subsidiary managers in large MNCs conducted in the USA, Canada, Mexico, China, India and Eastern Europe.

Findings

The primary finding of this study is that knowledge transfer mechanisms arise as a result of both formal and informal structures of the MNC. Formal …

Introduction, Noel Gaston, Ahmed M. Khalid

Ahmed Khalid

Extract: Globalization is very much part of the modern vernacular. Arguably, it was first used by McLuhan and Fiore (1968) when they introduced the concept of the ‘global village’. Globalization is characterized by the growth of the international trade of goods and services, the growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) as well as the political and social linkages that accompany growing economic integration. Outwardly, the driving forces seem to be the decline in administrative barriers to trade, sharp falls in the costs of transportation and communication, fragmentation of production processes and the development in information and communication technologies (ICT). Arguably, …

Multinational R&D In China: Differentiation And Integration Of Global R&D Networks, Jian Wang, Zheng Liang, Lan Xue

Jian Wang