engleski

THE ROLE OF EXPATRIATE MANAGERS IN MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES REVERSE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

As the lack of physical resources becomes increasingly evident, new, advanced resources are sought for to enhance company capability. The focus of this doctoral thesis is on one such resource, knowledge, as one of the most advanced and complex company assets at the core of relatively recently developed resource-based and knowledge-based views of the firm. Knowledge often demands a complex environment for its creation and existence. Multinational companies (MNCs) thus often present the most appropriate environment for knowledge creation. Given its elusiveness and complexity, management of knowledge in MNCs is a highly demanding process, involving considerable resources and often using the mechanism of expatriate managers, which is the primary mechanism studied by this thesis. With the development of the network perspective research on knowledge transfer has started to steer in one specific direction, emphasizing reverse knowledge transfer which is the subject of this thesis. Reverse knowledge transfer via expatriate managers is studied here on a sample of MNCs working in Croatia. The goal of the thesis is to observe whether knowledge is managed across the globe in the same way, using for this purpose the post- transition characteristics and small size of the Croatian market. The purpose of the doctoral thesis is to analyze the reverse knowledge transfer model giving the highest responsibility in this process to expatriate managers and their competences, as well as to various knowledge characteristics including knowledge specificity. A small but open economy like Croatia presents a perfect sample for empirical analysis. The Croatian market, even though still not on the level of other developed EU countries, strongly converges to them, and presents a perfect pattern of post-transition economies which are enlarging EU in the last 15 years. Market offerings and needs are relatively similar, which makes this research comparable to other post-transition countries. The results indicate that reverse knowledge transfer is a highly supported process in the sample of Croatian companies. It is further enhanced by expatriate ability, while their motivation and proactivity turned out to be insignificant in this process. Knowledge characteristics turned out to be a statistically insignificant moderator of reverse knowledge transfer process, while they affected expatriate competences. Finally, size and industry type in the sample did not have an effect on expatriate competences while they mediated reverse knowledge transfer. This doctoral thesis presents a comprehensive framework which illustrates the reverse knowledge transfer process and uses a combination of international business and human resource management approaches to explains it. As such, it presents the first of its kind in Croatia.

Multinational company; subsidiary; reverse knowledge transfer; expatriate managers; knowledge

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