Cultivating local knowledge: Agency, power and culture

UM > Faculty of Business Administration

Status	已發表Published
	Cultivating local knowledge: Agency, power and culture
	Mak, K. Y.; Hong, F. L.; Snell, R.
	2012-04-01
Source Publication	Shedding New Lights on Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities
Abstract	Organization learning in multinational companies (MNCs) is typically perceived as knowledge acquisition and transfer between headquarter and subsidiaries, as well as among subsidiaries (Birkinshaw, 1997; Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; Hansen, 2002; Schulz, 2003). According to Bartlett & Ghoshal (1989), valuable knowledge and seeds of innovations can arise from anywhere of the MNCs, not only from the headquarters, but also from subsidiaries in both developed and emerging economies. For example, McDonald’s had successfully shared an innovative practice of ‘how to wrap a hamburger without leaving a finger thumb print on it’ from Brazil and spread it across the global networks (Hill, 2009). Therefore, for MNCs to maximize the potential of organizational learning, it is important to engage in continuous learning and improvements by cultivating, leveraging and integrating local knowledge to its global operations (Birkinshaw, Hood & Jonsson, 1998; Hockling, Brown & Harzing, 2004; Mudambi, 2002; Peng, 2001). Local knowledge cultivation here refers to helping the locals to develop their learning capability. Since after the host country personnel acquire all knowledge from the headquarters, they should continue to develop the know-how by themselves (Ichijo & Kohlbacher, 2008), thus representing a new but important source of learning for the network of MNC subsidiaries. We have seen a growing number of studies related to reverse knowledge transfer recently (Ambos et al., 2006; Rabbiosi, 2011; Yang et al., 2008). However, extant studies on reverse knowledge flow tend to adopt a macro level orientation (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; Tsang, 2002; Napier, 2006) by focusing on the knowledge-related roles of subsidiaries (Yang et al., 2008) and the structural mechanisms to facilitate the knowledge flows to other parts of MNCs (Bjorkman et al., 2004). This perspective somehow ignores the social and cultural dynamics occurred in situ, which, according to the social construction perspective of organizational learning (Elkjaer, 2004), is important for cultivating local knowledge. In the present paper, we try to understand the social constitutive processes of organizational learning for cultivating local knowledge. We first review the social theory of organizational learning and its relevance to the studies of MNCs. Then some important issues shaping the acquisition and enactment of local knowledge, such as power (Fox, 2000), agency (Becker-Ritterspach, 2010; Saka-Helmhout, 2010) and culture (Napier, 2006), are discussed. Finally, we conclude the paper by outlining some future research agenda.
Keyword	Local knowledge power agency culture
Language	英語English
The Source to Article	PB_Publication
PUB ID	8064
Document Type	Conference paper
Collection	Faculty of Business Administration
Corresponding Author	Hong, F. L.
Recommended Citation GB/T 7714	Mak, K. Y.,Hong, F. L.,Snell, R.. Cultivating local knowledge: Agency, power and culture[C], 2012.
APA	Mak, K. Y.., Hong, F. L.., & Snell, R. (2012). Cultivating local knowledge: Agency, power and culture. Shedding New Lights on Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities.

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