The paper addresses reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) from foreign subsidiary to parent company. Specifically, it aims at investigating to what extent the effectiveness of such a transfer is influenced by: (i) the organizational mechanisms employed for transferring knowledge; (ii) the subsidiary’s role, its autonomy, and its relationships with the local context. The empirical analysis considers 162 transfers of best practices possessed by foreign subsidiaries and transferred back to their Italian parent companies. Results confirm that the impact of RKT on the parent company’s innovativeness is greater when: (i) person-based mechanisms are employed for transferring knowledge; (ii) subsidiaries are competence-creating; and (iii) knowledge developed by subsidiaries benefits from local external linkages.
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Paper provided by DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies in its series DRUID Working Papers with number
06-22.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business O39 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Other
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