Abstract
It plays an important role in establishing and maintaining competitive advantages in multinational corporations (MNCs). MNCs transfer knowledge among parent corporations and foreign subsidiaries. While multinational firms tend to send outstanding expatriates to foreign subsidiaries to transfer knowledge. In this study, we theoretically indentify three dimensions during the knowledge transfer among expatriates and local staff: ability, motivation and seeking for the opportunities to transfer knowledge. Then we integrate the ability-motivation-opportunity with the absorptive capacity of corporations. The result shows that knowledge transfer from expatriates has indirect impact on performances of foreign subsidiaries, which will be stronger as the absorptive capacity of corporation becomes stronger.
Highlights
As technology develops and global integration accelerates, the core competitive advantages of corporations change from resource and wealth to knowledge management and innovation
We put forward four hypothesis, which are 1) the ability to transfer knowledge is positively correlated with the performance of subsidiaries; 2) the motivation to transfer is positively correlated with the performance of subsidiaries; 3) while expatriates are more actively seeking opportunities to transfer knowledge, the performance of subsidiary is better; 4) the absorptive capacity of subsidiaries as a mediator is positively correlated with the competitive capacity of expatriates, which is positively correlated with the performance of subsidiaries
In the trend of globalization, the parent company of multinational corporations (MNCs) effectively transferring knowledge to subsidiaries can build a competitive advantage in subsidiaries
Summary
As technology develops and global integration accelerates, the core competitive advantages of corporations change from resource and wealth to knowledge management and innovation. Competitive advantages of MNCs have increasingly depended on their unique knowledge which accumulates during their long-term development and effective knowledge transfer between parents and foreign subsidiaries. While the integration of these knowledge to some extend depends on expatriates sent from parent company to foreign subsidiaries. In the research of Gong, he pointed out that expatriates staff is positively related to the performance of subsidiaries, while Gaur in 2007 found out that the relationship between expatriates staff and performance of subsidiaries is not so significant or even some evidences showed negative correlation Most of these researches focus on the number and the characteristics of expatriates staff, and there is a big uncertainty during the research. We come up with a model of knowledge transfer, the absorptive capacity of subsidiaries and the performance of subsidiaries to do the study
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
