CONSEQUENCES AND TIME PATTERNS OF THE FDI KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVER EFFECT

This thesis is concerned with the process of international knowledge transfer mediated by multinational corporations ’ Foreign Direct Investment. Answering to International Business scholars ’ recent call for a deeper analysis of the multinational firms ’ strategic behaviour at the level of the subsidiary, it explores the theoretical drivers behind the active role foreign subsidiaries can play in influencing the process of knowledge dissemination within the host-location. Using two different datasets on foreign subsidiaries ’ local innovative activity and business linkages with domestic suppliers and distributors, the empirical analysis lends support for established theorizing about multinational firms ’ trade-off between the opportunity to learn from the host-environment and the risk to lose control over their proprietary knowledge assets, due to the local spillover effect. Moreover, shifting the focus of the analysis from the head-quarter to the foreign subunits, the results reveal that subsidiaries actively manage these knowledge flows within their host-locations, to the aim of fostering incoming information (in terms of both technology and knowledge of the local business network and market), while at th