Multinational Internal Knowledge Of The International Transfer Of National And Cultural Differences Impact Studies

As the carrier of globalizing production and operation, the entity of international technology transfer,and the important channel of foreign direct investment, the multinational corporation has become an engine to promote the global economy development. With the emergence of knowledge-based economy, the contention concerning about the competitive advantage source of multinational corporations has changed from the initial asset transactions and scale advantages to the advantages of knowledge gathering, innovation and transfer. With the global business environment increasingly showing dynamic, complex, uncertainty characteristics, the mutinational corporations pay more attention to the effective flow and integration of internal knowledge. But as a multi-cultural institution, the accumulated courtry-specific knowledge of multinational corporations is generated from specific social, political, economic and cultural backgrounds, therefore, its cross-border transfer of knowledge inevitably is subject to the impact.of macro-cultural and institutional factors.Through literature review, this paper finds that there are very few theoretical and empirical analysis about the impact of national culture difference on knowledge transfer of multinational corporations and, in the few empirical analysis, almost all of the statistical results show that the impact of national culture difference on knowledge transfer of multinational corporations is not significant. However, through literature reading and experience of common sense, this paper assumes that although the existence of national culture difference does not have a decisive effect on international knowledge transfer of multinational corporations, the internal communication barriers and cognitive misunderstandings stemming from national culture difference in multinational corporations can not be ignored. Therefore, this article will adjust national cultural difference as the moderation variable to construct theoretical model, hoping to figure out the moderation path of national cultural difference through empirical analysis. In addition, the paper will also use Hofstede's four dimensions of national culture, that is, individualism and collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoid , masculinity and femininity to analyze the characteristic of the moderation path of national cultural difference in different dimensions of national culture and through analysis and comparison of the similarities and differences in moderation path of different cultural dimensions, we can thus propose corresponding measures to increase cross-cultural knowledge transfer effect. Incorporating knowledge transfer theory of multinational companies, cross-cultural management and communication theory, social capital theory, the use of Hofstede's national culture dimensions, this paper constructs conceptual model of the national culture difference impact on internal knowledge transfer of multinational corporations. The model adjusts national culture difference as the moderation variable, transfer channels, transfer motivation and transfer ability as the independent variables, knowledge transfer effect as the dependent variable, and proposes for the underlying assumptions for the relationship between variables .More specifically, the assumptions are divided into two parts: First, on the assumptions about the decisive factors. This part will verify the direct relations between the dependent variable and independent variables and the intermediary relations among independent variables in order to determine e the effect path of the independent variables on the dependent variables; second, on the assumption about the moderating factors. This part will verify the direct relations between the dependent variable and moderating variables and the moderating effect of national culture difference on the relations between the dependent variable and independent variables. Verification of moderating effects is the core content of this paper and is divided into two steps : First, the verification of the moderating effect of national culture difference on the direct relations between the dependent variable and independent variables. second, the verification of the moderating effect of national culture difference on the intermediary relations among the independent variablesOn the assumptions anout the decisive factors, the empirical findings show that: among the six independent variables which are the transfer channel (the formal channel and social channel), the transfer motivation (transmission motivation and absorptive motivation) and the transfer ability (transmission ability and absorptive ability), the transfer ability has significant positive correlation to the transfer effect and in addition the formal channel and transmission motivation also has the direct relations to the transfer effects. As for the intermediary relations among the independent variables, the empirical findings show that: transfer motivation and transfer ability have the intermediary effect between transfer channel and transfer effect. transfer motivation has the intermediary effect between transfer ability and transfer effect. transfer ability has the intermediary effect between transfer motivation and transfer effect. On the assumption about the moderating factors, the empirical findings show that: among the five moderation variables which are national culture difference, individualism and collectivism difference, power distance difference, uncertainty avoid difference, masculinity and femininity difference , only individualism and collectivism difference has the significant negative correlation to the transfer effect. As for the moderating effects , empirical findings show that: all the five moderation variables has moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer channel. In addition, national culture difference, individualism and collectivism difference have moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer ability; power distance difference has moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer motivation; uncertainty avoid difference has moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer motivation and transfer ability. For overall moderating effect of this five moderation variables, with the exception of masculinity and femininity difference which has overall negative moderation effect on transfer effect, the other four moderation variables which have both negative and positive moderation effect, therefore, are difficult to grasp and judge overall effect size and direction of these four moderation variablesThe theoretical contribution and innovation of this paper include the following six areas: First, comprehensive and in-depth literature review; Second, research perspective and methods are explorative and innovative; Third, the theoretical models and assumptions truly reflect the relationships among the variables; Fourth, open the black box of the impact path of national culture difference on the internal knowledge transfer of the multinational corporations; Fifth, comprehensive analysis of moderation effects of the national culture difference; Lastly, explain the reasons why previous studies regarding the impact of national culture difference on knowledge transfer in multinational corporations were weaken.Research conclusions and practical enlightenment include: First, all of the moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer channel are negative. That means the existence of national culture difference weakens the positive relationships between transfer channel and transfer effect; Second, all of the moderation effects on the influencing path of transfer motivation and ability are positive. That means the existence of national culture difference strengthens the positive relationships between transfer motivation, transfer ability and transfer effect; Lastly, the moderation effects on the influencing path of the independent variables are both positive and negative. That means the existence of national culture difference can weaken and strengthen the relationships between the independent variables and dependent variables.