The Joint Influencing Mechanism of Proximities and Knowledge Base on Multinational Companies’ Global Innovation Networks

This paper explores the joint influencing mechanism of the two-dimensional proximity,namely geographical and organisational proximity, and knowledge base on the relationalpattern of multinational companies’ (MNCs) global innovation networks (GINs). It argueswhen it comes to MNCs’ GINs, the conventional geographical-proximity-and-knowledgebaseframework allows only for an incomplete understanding of the network relationalpatterns and particularly the observed differences between different GINs. The papersuggests an extended theoretical framework based on a two-dimensional proximity conceptand the knowledge base approach for understanding how and why MNCs’ GINs areorganised in specifically different ways. An in-depth comparative case study with socialnetwork analysis is used to illustrate the applicability of the framework in question