Lars Håkan­son

Management of R&D and Technology in Multinational Companies

What motives and forces lead MNCs to develop networks of international R&D units? How have these changed over time? What are the challenges and opportunities of managing groups of R&D engineers with diverse cultural backgrounds and technical expertise? Many foreign R&D units are added through mergers and acquisitions, and the problems are often aggravated by differences in organizational cultures and perspectives between buyers and targets. Qualitative case studies and quantitative statistical analyses pursue these and related questions.

‘Psychic Distance’ in the Internationalization Process of the Firm

In the long dominant ‘Uppsala School’ of firm internationalization, imperfect knowledge and experience of foreign markets is a key explanatory factor, captured in the concept of ‘psychic distance.’ Issues regarding both its theoretical meaning and its operational measurement have been subject of considerable debate. Based on a novel set of empirical data, a series of articles have attempted to improve our understanding of the role of knowledge in shaping the internationalization of firms.

The ’Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm’

The so-called ‘knowledge-based view of the firm’ has long dominated research on knowledge governance. Its primary focus is the governance properties of business firms as compared to those of arms-length markets. However, effective knowledge processes are not exclusive to firms – complex knowledge-intensive activities are undertaken also in other kinds of organizations with diverse institutional arrangements, including, for example, public and professional service organizations, professional partnerships, or even virtual internet communities. Proceeding on a novel conceptualization of knowledge processes, this stream of research attempts to theoretically expand our understanding of how the governance structures in archetypes of organizations are influenced by the nature of their dominant knowledge processes.