• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.277-306
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• 2008

Knowledge1 is considered to be a key element of understanding how organizations gain and sustain competitive advantages. But very few firms are capable of creating the requisite knowledge and thus, firms should acquire and exploit new knowledge through knowledge transfer processes. The empirical part of this study involves examining relationships among adaptability of knowledge and knowledge transfer and marketing performance and testing the moderating roles of absorptive capacity, socialization and local marketing knowledge. This study is organized as follows: (1) Previous literature on knowledge, knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity is summarized, followed by the development of hypotheses derived from the knowledge-based view and absorptive capacity. (2) The hypotheses are tested with data collected from MNCs' subsidiaries performing marketing activities in Korea.Thestudyisclosedwithfindings,implications,andconclusions. Following six research hypotheses are drawn from literature review in related areas: H1: Adaptability of knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with knowledge inflows into the receiving subsidiary. H2: The level of marketing knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H3: Increases in potential absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H4: Increases in realized absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H5: Increases in socialization activity among the headquarters and subsidiaries will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H6: Increases in the level of locally developed marketing knowledge will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. The research framework that illustrates the proposed hypotheses is presented in figure 1. The unit of analysis for this study is knowledge transfer from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries to their subsidiaries operating in South Korea. The population for this study consists of subsidiaries established either as joint ventures or as wholly-owned subsidiaries. A group of 603 foreign firms were drawn from diverse industry organizations and business societies. After personal contact, telephone, fax, and e-mail to request that the respondents complete the questionnaire, 282 valid questionnaires from 133 initial sample companies were collected. The results of the empirical analyses significantly support all of the proposed hypotheses except hypothesis 3. Adaptability of external knowledge promotes knowledge transfer and the relationship is moderated by a firm's potential knowledge absorptive capacity. On the other hand, knowledge transfer improves a firm's marketing performance and a firm's realized knowledge absorptive capacity and local marketing knowledge moderate the relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings in this study are as follows: (1) firms must take seeking, transferring, sharing and exploiting of external knowledge into serious consideration, while simultaneously creating knowledge to support the necessary business operations, remain competitive, and achieve superior performance. (2) Firms should continuously seek to develop their knowledge absorptive capacity (both potential and realized capacity) to absorb, learn and utilize valuable external knowledge. (3) Firms should emphasize not only absorptive capacity, but also development of local knowledge. Firms with strong absorptive capability and local knowledge can learn and transfer more external knowledge, which can be translated into greater levels of competence and performance.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.209-225
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between IT human capability and knowledge transfer and the role of absorptive capacity between them. From the test of both measurement and structural model using Partial Least Squares (PLS), IT human capability is found to be significant to absorptive capacity and knowledge transfer. Absorptive capacity is also significantly related to knowledge transfer. The interesting result found in this study is that the path of absorptive capacity drawn from IT human capability to knowledge transfer is stronger than the direct relationship between IT human capability and knowledge transfer, indicating that absorptive capacity plays an important role in knowledge transfer. This result indicates that IT personnel with stronger technical skill, interpersonal skill and management capability are more likely to acquire and learn knowledge effectively from outside expertise. Moreover, this study shows that absorptive capacity, the individual’s ability to utilize external knowledge is derived from IT human capability and strongly effects on transferring knowledge from outsourcing vendors. This study suggests IT related managers that the development of IT human capability and absorptive capacity should be recognized for a successful exploitation of outside knowledge within a firm. It is also a necessary condition for a successful IT implementation and maintenance independently and economically from outside vendors.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.121-132
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• 2016

Purpose - This study has the following objectives. First, it seeks to build an integrated model that can analyze the path through which headquarters, subsidiary competence, and knowledge transfer performance influence subsidiary performance. Second, it analyzes the influence of the specificity of technology as a moderating effect factor on knowledge transfer process. Third, it will conduct an empirical analysis on distributive manufacturing MNEs and suggests an implication for companies that actually need technological localization. The difference of this study are as follows. First, unlike the existing studies, this study can expand a theoretical discussion as it uses subsidiary performance as the dependent variable. Second, it sets the specificity of technology as a moderating effect factor, not an antecedent, and can draw a theoretical implication. Research design, data, and methodology - This study built a path analysis model to identify the influence of the disseminative capacity and absorptive capacity of distributive manufacturing MNEs on subsidiary performance. Based on the previous studies, it set 19 items as 5 latent variables, and established 6 hypotheses by including the moderating effect of the specificity of technology between them. The final 203 companies were selected as analysis samples through a survey questionnaire. For empirical analysis, the study used PLS (Partial Least Square) that is based on structural equation model. Results - The empirical analysis result demonstrated that both headquarters' disseminative capability and subsidiaries absorptive capacity had a positive influence on knowledge transfer performance. Knowledge transfer performance also had a positive influence on subsidiary performance. In the analysis of moderating effect, the specificity of technology acted as a significant moderating variable only between knowledge transfer performance and subsidiary performance; it did not show a statistically significant moderating effect among disseminative capability, absorptive capacity, and knowledge transfer performance. Conclusions - The empirical analysis results of this study demonstrate the importance of disseminative capability and absorptive capacity in knowledge transfer to subsidiaries from the distributive manufacturing MNEs in Korea. The analysis on the moderating effect indicates that the specificity of technology in Korean companies influences on the process of making achievement by using the transferred knowledge.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.21-51
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• 2010

This paper examines the knowledge transfer effect in Korean venture systems. Existing literature has provided rich evidence of the effect of knowledge transfer, but we do not have micro mechanisms inherent in the process of knowledge transfer. This paper argues that knowledge transfer effects vary depending on the knowledge types, sources, and legacy. This paper also tests role of the two important pillars in knowledge transfer of Korean venture startups; venture capital and government. This paper also examines the role of absorptive capacity in the knowledge transfer process. With 1,862 sample of Korean venture firms, this study employed three methods depending on 3 different types of dependent variables: hierarchical regression, logistic regression, and survival analysis. Main findings include that 1) knowledge characteristic itself and its alignment with industry influence the knowledge transfer effects, 2) government support has a negative effect on financial performance of venture firms, but does not have significant interaction effect on knowledge transfer, and 3) the absorptive capacity of each firm moderates the knowledge transfer effects. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2011

This study focuses on the knowledge-transfer activities of Korean universities at the organisational level. Considering the idiosyncratic characteristics of the Korean university system, as well as those of universities in other recently developed Asian countries experienced a rapid economic catch-up, this study is more interested in the relationship between the scientific capacity of universities and their knowledge-transfer activities, and between universities' funding sources and their knowledge-transfer activities. According to the results of the study, scientific capacity in a specific discipline, such as engineering, is important for universities in both other developed countries and in Korea, while scientific capacity (regardless of the discipline) is apparently not important for Korean universities, particularly in the area of domestic publication. Furthermore, this result supports the proposition suggested that strategically chosen industrial sectors in rapid catch-up countries are closely related to the scientific capacity of universities in specific disciplines. In terms of funding sources, the amount of funding from industry is strongly related to the knowledge-transfer activities of universities, whereas the proportion of funding from industry relative to the total amount of funding is not as significantly related to knowledge-transfer activities. The failure to identify a significant relationship between central government funding and knowledge-transfer activities may be due to less strict requirements for commercialisation in central government R&D programmes. Otherwise, central government funding fails to generate meaningful knowledge-transfer activities in universities.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.53-67
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• 2019

Reverse knowledge transfer has been an important research theme in the literature on multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper proposes major determinants of MNC headquarters' willingness to adopt and use marketing knowledge from their subsidiaries. We argue that the willingness will be jointly determined by both the headquarter's absorptive capacity and the focal subsidiary's transfer capacity and willingness to transfer. In addition, we argue that these capability and motivation effects are moderated by (1) institutional distance between home and the focal host country, (2) the need to unlearn existing routines, and (3) types of entry modes. This paper contributes to the reverse knowledge transfer literature by proposing the argument that both motivational and capability factors are likely to determine the MNC parents' willingness to adopt and use marketing knowledge from their subsidiaries.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.253-290
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• 2017

Research on reverse knowledge transfer from subsidiaries to headquarters is recently gaining prominence. The debate regarding the precedents affecting the phenomenon has yet to reach a consensus. Therefore, this paper attempts to identify the effects of an organization's subsidiaries' knowledge transfer capacity (KTC) on reversely transferred local market information (LMI) to headquarters. The present study also examines the moderating effect of intrinsic KTC on the relationship between extrinsic KTC and RKT in an effort to gain better insights into KTC. Through sample data gathered from South Korea, knowledge development capability and subsidiary willingness were found to be vital precedents for successful reverse transferring of LMI to headquarters. Furthermore, we also found that subsidiary willingness functions as an interfering moderator between the relationship of knowledge development capability and RKT. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.9-39
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• 2005

Recently, knowledge transfer has been recognized as one of the major factors for success of IT projects but little investigated in Information Systems research. IT project, which needs collaboration between organization's IT project team and external partner, is an critical source for a firm to acquire external knowledge and to achieve its competitive advantage. Based on this recognition on knowledge transfer under IT project, we investigate a mediation role of knowledge transfer to IT project performance after identifying its antecedents such as project team capabilities and partner capabilities. The research model is tested by analyzing 161 sample data gathered from firms' employees who have participated IT projects within last two years. The results reveal that knowledge transfer has full-mediation effect between its antecedents and IT project performance. Moreover, project team capabilities have more impacts on knowledge transfer than partner capabilities do.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.39 no.9
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• pp.903-911
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• 1990

When load areas on a feeder are deenergized due to faults and scheduled outage, operators need to identify neighboring feeders, try to restore customers and minimize out-of-service areas. These cases include knowledge of system states and various constraints such as voltage drop. This paper concerns the load transfer in fault restoration and scheduled outage. Also, the operating constraints such as line current capacity, relay trip current, transformer capacity, voltage drop and line loss are considered. This expert system can propose the optimal load transfer method by analyzing the system state and considering the constraints.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.444-467
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• 2023

Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have been acknowledged to play a key role in promoting innovation and economic development. In Peru, 99.5% of formal firms are MSMEs, thus promoting innovation in these firms could have a significant impact on the Peruvian economy. In spite of Innovate Peru's efforts, Peru is still one of the countries that invests the least in innovation, with MSMEs offering low value added. Innovate Peru has launched programs (technological missions) to improve MSMEs' innovation through technology-transfer-oriented subsidies, which may strengthen companies' absorptive capacity (AC) and thus their capabilities to identify and integrate internal and external knowledge. This study assesses the impact of these programs on MSMEs. Data were collected from 85 MSMEs that participated in Innovate Peru's technological missions between 2014 and 2016. Findings show that all the dimensions of AC have a positive impact on innovation; however, the impact of economic subsidy was found to be non-significant. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.