Enhancing subsidiary absorptive capacity: the role of knowledge acquisition practices and intellectual capital

Drawing from the absorptive capacity framework and the knowledge-based view of multinational corporations (MNCs), this dissertation explores linkages among knowledge acquisition practices, organizational learning, knowledge creation capability, and performance among a sample of US subsidiaries of multinational corporations operating in the manufacturing industry. Overall, data from 106 MNC subsidiaries located in the US and headquartered either in Europe or Japan support the predictions of this study and indicate that subsidiary performance is driven by both an internal and an external path of knowledge acquisition and learning. Specifically, results showed that internal and external knowledge acquisition practices were positively related to the learning of internal and external know-how respectively. Both internal and external learning, in turn, were positively related to a subsidiary’s knowledge creation capability, which, in turn, was positively related to subsidiaries’ performance in the US. However, the external learning–knowledge creation capability path was much stronger than the internal learning–knowledge creation path which was positive only under conditions of low external learning, low subsidiary social capital, and high subsidiary organizational capital. Several methods for testing mediated relationships converged on the finding that internal and external learning as well as knowledge creation capability carry the influence of internal and external knowledge acquisition practices to subsidiary competitive advantage through an indirect path. Results, in general, did not support the predictions that intellectual capital positively moderates the relationship between learning and knowledge creation capability. Moreover, two of the three significant interactions of the relationship between internal learning and knowledge creation capability – social capital and external learning - were in the opposite direction of what was hypothesized - yielding to an unexpected pattern of findings. Only in the case of high organizational capital, the relationship between internal learning and knowledge creation capability was positively stronger. For the relationship between external learning and knowledge creation capability, none of the proposed intellectual capital moderators were significant.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-131)by Saba Colakogl