Publication: Repatriates and reverse knowledge transfer in MNCs
Authors
Sánchez Vidal, M. E. ; Sanz Valle, Raquel ; Barba Aragón, María Isabel
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Publisher
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2016.1216876
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
©2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This document is the Accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in The International Journal of Human Resource Management.
Abstract
There is widely-held assumption that knowledge is one of the most important drivers of firm’s
performance. Multinational companies (MNCs) have the potential advantage of acquiring and
utilizing knowledge across borders. But for this potential advantage to become real, the
knowledge generated in any of their units around the world should be transferred to their
other units. This paper adopts an innovative approach for the study of intra-MNC knowledge
transfer by focusing on the role of repatriates as transferors of knowledge from foreign
subsidiaries to the headquearters, which is an under-research topic. In particular, the paper
studies the impact of repatriates´ abilities and motivation to share knowledge (disseminative
capacity) on the transfer of knowledge from subsidiaries to headquarters (reverse knowledge
transfer). In addition, the paper examines the determinants of repatriates´ disseminative
capacity. After reviewing the relevant literature and proposing the hypotheses, this paper
presents an empirical research with a sample of Spanish MNCs. The findings provide
evidence that repatriates' disseminative capacity is positively associated to reverse knowledge
transfer. The paper also identifies some drivers of this: the knowledge the repatriates acquired
during the expatriation and the firm´s international assignments policy.
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Citation
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29 - 10
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