Migrating ideas: An empirical study of intra-organizational knowledge transfer

In this dissertation, I studied the process of knowledge transfer between the headquarters and international subsidiaries of multinational corporations. My study specifically focused on the manner in which knowledge transfer was presented to subsidiaries by the headquarters as a different way of thinking and doing, and the way in which these commands were internalized, assimilated, and resisted by the subsidiaries. For my empirical analysis, I relied on ethnographic techniques, and spent several months in two large US-based multinational corporations, especially in their subsidiaries in India. I identified four specific episodes of knowledge transfer within these corporations, and documented them using participant observation, interviews, and a variety of documents, such as “firewall-protected” FTP sites, public internet sites, internal memos, press releases and other public documents, and transcripts of executive speeches. I juxtaposed this data with macro data on changing corporate laws in India and communiqués from trade federations and international regimes. My research was guided by a constructivist epistemological position, which attempted to build a theory of intra-organizational knowledge transfer through inductive research. I conclude by suggesting that knowledge transfer represents an attempt by the headquarters to wage hegemony, and induce the acceptance of its position by the subsidiary as beneficial not only to the organization, but also to itself. However, this attempt at hegemony is always incomplete, as various members of the subsidiary constantly thwart the attempt by the headquarters to impose their will on the subsidiary without recourse to coercion. The same process is embodied at the national level, where the attempts by international regimes to induce Third-World nations to accept neoliberalism, and structural adjustment is presented as a progressive move, and often embraced as such by national elites, but can rarely be pushed through without coercive and illegitimate deployment of power structures. The study concludes with a call for organizational researchers to develop an organizational imagination, where research is directly linked to the impact of organizations on the lives of ordinary people, and helps them demystify the role played by organizations in their lives