• Knowledge Flows within Multinational Corporations: Explaining Subsidiary Isolation and its Performance Implications
  (with Arvidsson, N., Birkinshaw, J.), Organization Science, 19(1), 90-107.

ABSTRACT
Applying a new theoretical and empirical approach to intra-firm knowledge transfers, this paper provides some initial insight to the little-researched phenomenon of why some subsidiaries are isolated from knowledge transfer activities within the MNC. Knowledge transfer is framed as a problemistic search process initiated by the recipient unit. We show that knowledge flows from units that are perceived to be highly capable to units that perceive themselves to be highly capable. Knowledge flows are also associated with existing levels of communication and reciprocity. Taken together, these findings suggest that knowledge transfers in MNCs typically occur between highly capable members of an in-crowd, while the isolated minority rarely, if ever, engage in knowledge sharing activities. Finally, we show that the isolated minority underperforms other subsidiaries, suggesting the possibility of a "liability of internal isolation".

An earlier version of this paper won the Best Paper Award, International Management division, at the Academy of Management conference in 2004.

Read a research brief of this article published at the Sloan Management Review, Winter 2008 issue .

Working Papers

• Going Far For Something Close: Explaining Knowledge Stickiness in the Initiation of the External Knowledge Sourcing Process

ABSTRACT
This paper sheds new light on the initiation of the external knowledge sourcing process by revealing the patterns that explain why some opportunities to transfer external knowledge receive attention and are acted upon while others are missed. I suggest that multinational corporations (MNCs) are more likely to act on opportunities to transfer technologies that confirm their dominant logic and that are market proven. I also hypothesize that process attributes will have an impact on the odds of a successful initiation. I test my hypotheses using a proprietary database about the initiation of 137 external knowledge sourcing processes by one of the largest telecommunication services provider in the world.

• Global Sensing: the Internal Challenges of External Knowledge Sourcing (with Julian Birkinshaw)

ABSTRACT
This multi-methods paper provides a fine-grained account of the process through which large multinational corporations (MNCs) use specialized subsidiaries (viz. technology scouting units) to systematically search for opportunities to transfer knowledge across geographic and organizational boundaries. Our data collection effort has extended over the period of 34 months; involved more than 50 semi-structured interviews with managers in three continents; numerous field observations and the access to a proprietary database containing detailed information on 137 external technologies that were scouted by one of the largest telecommunication services provider in the world, between January 2003 and December 2005. The combination of our qualitative and quantitative findings sheds new light on our understanding of the different stages involved in the initiation of the external knowledge sourcing process and reveals a much less studied facet of this process: the challenges and the importance of the inward looking activities such as internal search, translation, matching and internal selling.

• External Knowledge Access versus Knowledge Protection: A Necessary Trade-off in Open Innovation? (with Birkinshaw, J. & Mol, M).

ABSTRACT
In the spirit of advancing our theoretical understanding of open innovation, this paper addresses one specific tension that lies at the heart of the phenomenon – the tension between accessing external knowledge and strategically protecting internal knowledge. We focus specifically on the interaction between the two approaches: we argue that strategic knowledge protection pursued in combination with a strategy of access to external knowledge will—jointly—have a negative effect on innovation performance; we also suggest that this negative interaction effect will only transpire under certain circumstances, depending on the approach used to access external knowledge. Our data set consists of questionnaire responses from the managers of 2,852 firms in 12 industry sectors that participated in the third round of the UK's Department of Trade and Industry Innovation Survey. We receive broad support for the arguments.

Case Studies

I have written several case studies, mostly while working as a Senior Researcher at Harvard Business School's Latin America Research Center.

Some of the cases which I co-authored with HBS faculty members are now taught in many schools around the world (and have been reprinted in different books). They include the case of Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer which is the global leader in regional jets; Gerdau, one of the largest steel producers in the world and Grupo Elektra, Latin America's leading specialty retailer.
 
More recently, I wrote case studies on Emirates Airline, Royal Bank of Scotland, and BT Group.

• LBS case studies
• HBS case studies

Links