The reverse transfer of knowledge in MNEs: the perspective of foreign subsidiaries in a post-transition country
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-07-2020-0247 |
| Published date | 15 December 2020 |
| Date | 15 December 2020 |
| Pages | 1082-1105 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Barbara Jankowska,Małgorzata Bartosik-Purgat,Iwona Olejnik |
The reverse transfer of knowledge
in MNEs: the perspective of
foreign subsidiaries in a
post-transition country
Barbara Jankowska
International Competitiveness, Pozna
n University of Economics and Business,
Pozna
n, Poland
Małgorzata Bartosik-Purgat
International Management, Pozna
n University of Economics and Business,
Pozna
n, Poland, and
Iwona Olejnik
Pozna
n University of Economics and Business, Pozna
n, Poland
Abstract
Purpose –The aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of the marketing and managerial knowledge
transfer from a foreign subsidiary located in a post-transition country to its headquarters established in a
developed country.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors combined the critical literature studies and empirical
research, where the method of Computer-assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) was applied. The empirical data
was gathered from 231 manufacturing foreign subsidiaries established in Poland (as one of the post-transition
economy). To test the hypotheses logistic regression was applied.
Findings –The knowledge accumulated in the foreign subsidiary, the amount and level of novelty of
innovation in the foreign subsidiary and its strategic autonomy is crucial for the occurrence of the reverse
knowledge transfer. However, the more powerful the foreign subsidiary is, the less eager it is to transfer
marketing and managerial knowledge to the headquarters.
Research limitations/implications –The study is concentrated just on the manufacturing sector in the
Polish economy. The results are based on the opinions and perception of managers, but they represent the
corporate perspective (not their individual ones).
Practical implications –The study provokes asking the question about the proper level of strategic
autonomy of a foreign subsidiary. The implication related to the autonomy is much about the proper strategy
for human resources management. The obtained results indicate that the intensity of innovation in a foreign
subsidiary “translates”to the outflow of knowledge from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarters. Thus,
encourages headquarters to let their subsidiaries innovate still monitoring their power.
Social implications –FSs are entities more or less embedded in the host markets, thus their strength and
sustainable existence is important for their stakeholders, in particular –internal entities such as employees and
JIC
22,6
1082
JEL Classification —F21, F23, O30
© Barbara Jankowska, Małgorzata Bartosik-Purgat and Iwona Olejnik. Published by Emerald
Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both
commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and
authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/
legalcode
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and
suggestions.
Funding: This paper is a result of the studies within the project of the National Science Centre in
Poland. Grant no. 2016/21/B/HS4/03030, title: Innovation performance of a foreign subsidiary and its
position in the network of a multinational enterprise - the perspective of foreign subsidiaries established
in Poland.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Received 27 July 2020
Revised 28 September 2020
21 October 2020
Accepted 2 November 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 6, 2021
pp. 1082-1105
Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-07-2020-0247
external entities such assuppliers, and other cooperating organisations and institutions in the host market. The
contribution of FSsto the innovationperformance and knowledge pool of external partners is determined much
by their absorptive capacity. Thus, the results obtained indirectly point to the importance of external agents
ability to absorb and exploit the knowledge.
Originality/value –The originality of the paper concerns three issues. Firstly, the previous studies are
mainly focused on either developed or emerging markets and as a result, the peculiarity of post-transition
economies, like Poland has been neglected. Secondly, the determinants of reverse knowledge transfer are
presented from the corporate perspective. Thirdly, authors focus on marketing and management knowledge
distributed from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarter.
Keywords Reverse knowledge transfer, Foreign subsidiary, Headquarters, Post-transition economy,
Autonomy, Innovation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Nowadays the key motivation for foreign direct investment is strategic assets-seeking, and
thus knowledge-seeking, among others. Foreign subsidiaries (FSs) play a significant role in
the global value chain of the multinational enterprises (MNE). FSs are often providers of
knowledge that is valuable and unique, from the perspective of the parent company (Eden,
2009;Michailova and Mustaffa, 2012;Dabi
c and Kiessling, 2019;Jim
enez-Jimenez et al., 2008;
Vlaj
ci
cet al., 2019a,b). This knowledge residing in FSs often becomes a primary source of
strength for the whole MNE (Chung, 2014;Eden, 2009;Frost and Zhou, 2005;Makela et al.,
2009;Blomkvist, 2012;Nair et al., 2015;Schotter and Bontis, 2009;Tseng, 2015;Wang et al.,
2019) and parent companies are interested in the transfer of knowledge and expertise back to
themselves. This kind of knowledge transfer is called reverse knowledge transfer (RKT)
(Criscuolo et al., 2005;Frost and Zhou, 2005;Li et al., 2016;McGuinness et al., 2013;Najafi-
Tavani et al., 2012;Rabbiosi and Santangelo, 2013;Tseng, 2015). Up until now, studies on
RKT have been mainly focused on either developed or emerging markets (H
akanson and
Nobel, 2001;Ambos et al., 2006;Yang et al., 2008;Rabbiosi, 2011;Najafi-Tavani et al., 2012;
Rabbiosi and Santangelo, 2013;Mudambi et al., 2014). Next, many studies still often focus on
the knowledge transfer from the parent companies (usually located in higher developed
countries) to their FSs (usually located in less developed countries). They also present the
determinants of knowledge transfer from parent companies, for example Ling et al. (2009)
identified three groups of elements that influence the knowledge transfer negatively:
individual obstacles (e.g. poor communication and interpersonal skills), organizational
barriers (e.g. poor managerial and leadership skills) and technological barriers (e.g. poor
integration of knowledge and IT systems, outdated technologies, etc.) (Ferencikova and
Hrdlickova, 2020). Referring to key drivers of the knowledge transfer (Minbaeva et al., 2014)
underline skills and motivation.
Next to these studies, other authors express the role of FS in knowledge augmenting and
competence-building processes (Mudambi and Navarra, 2004;Cantwell and Mudambi, 2005;
De Beule and Van Beveren, 2019).
In this paper the general authors` aim to contribute to the discourse on the foreign direct
investment in Poland being a post-transition country presented in the literature (Terry, 2000;
Weresa, 2004;Kowalewska and Radło, 2014;Gorynia et al., 2019) and try to merge three strain
of studies –internationalisation, knowledge management and organisational studies. They
shed light on the sustainability and strength of FSs established in Poland and refer to the
knowledge on the determinants of RKT in the context of a post-transition economy. In
relation to the general aim of the paper a detailed once was formulated which concerns the
identification of the determinants of the marketing and managerial knowledge transfer from
a FS located in a post-transition country to its headquarters (HQ) established in a developed
country.
The reverse
transfer of
knowledge in
MNEs
1083
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