Abstract: Along the last decades, foreign direct investment has become a pervasive phenomenon in the global economy. Indeed, in 2007, global FDI inflows reached $1,833 billion, overcoming the peak level of $1,411 billion realized in 2000 (UNCTAD, 2008). The activity of multinational corporations investing abroad is especially relevant for the knowledge flows that take place between the MNCs and their host countries, as a consequence of the set-up of their foreign subsidiaries. While there is plenty of analyses regarding the country-level and sector-level factors affecting this phenomenon, scarce attention has been paid to the firm-specific profile of foreign investors, which may influence the knowledge diffusion due to their localization. Moreover, on a more theoretical level, the knowledge spillover effect has been traditionally assumed to happen through the so-called “pipeline-model” (Marin and Bell, 2006), as an automatic outcome of the international transfer of the superior knowledge developed by the parent companies, with no role for the subsidiaries in the dynamics of this phenomenon. Only very recently, scholars have begun to recognize that also subsidiaries may influence the patterns of knowledge flows within their host country (Branstetter, 2006; Marin and Sasidharan, 2008). Building on these insights, and combining IB literature and recent findings on agglomeration dynamics, I explore the subsidiary technological capabilities and knowledge strategies that affect the extent of knowledge spillovers to host-country organizations.

Date and Time:
Friday, 5 February 2010, 12:00 noon

Place:
Copenhagen Business School
Porcelænshaven 24 B, 1st floor
2000 Frederiksberg

Room 1.68

Arranged by Center for Strategic Management and Globalization