Empirical Study of the Effect of Knowledge Types on Knowledge Transfer from Parent Company to the Subsidiaries in Multinational Corporations

Abstract

The multinational corporations' cross-cultural, cross-system and cross-country management characteristics bring up its unique knowledge structure and knowledge system. When the different types of knowledge are transferred from parent company to the subsidiaries, the effectiveness of transfer is affected by different factors. We use structural equation modeling to analyze data from 103 subsidiaries in China. The results show that the effect of knowledge types on the relationship between causal ambiguity and knowledge application, and between causal ambiguity and satisfactory are significant. But the effect of knowledge types on the relationship between absorptive capacity and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer, and between absorptive capacity and causal ambiguity are insignificant.