Title: The impact of social and relational contexts on innovation transfer in foreign subsidiaries

Authors: Maitê Alves Bezerra; Felipe Mendes Borini

Addresses: Department of International Business and Strategy, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AH, UK ' Department of International Business Studies, Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM-SP), R. Álvaro Alvim, 123, Vila Mariana, 04018-010, São Paulo, SP, Brazil; University of São Paulo, Department of Business Studies, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 908, Cidade Universitária, 05508-010, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that innovation is one of the pillars of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and that technological knowledge from different host locations is a key factor to the MNEs' competitive advantages development. Concerning these assumptions, in this paper we aim to understand how the social and the relational contexts affect the conventional and reverse transfer of innovation from MNEs' subsidiaries hosted in emerging markets. We analysed the social context through the institutional profile (CIP) level and the relational context through trust and integration levels utilising a survey sent to 172 foreign subsidiaries located in Brazil, as well as secondary data. Through an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis we found that the relational context affects the conventional and reverse innovation transfer in subsidiaries hosted in emerging markets. We however did not find support for the social context effect.

Keywords: innovation; multinational enterprises; MNEs; technological knowledge; social context; relational context; innovation transfer; reverse transfer; foreign subsidiaries; emerging markets; technology transfer; Brazil; knowledge transfer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2015.067823

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2015 Vol.12 No.1, pp.16 - 31

Received: 04 Dec 2013
Accepted: 19 Oct 2014

Published online: 18 Mar 2015 *

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