The Mechanism Of Emerging MNCs' Reverse Knowledge Transfer On Innovation Performance Of Parent Companies

In recent years,Chinese outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)has increased rapidly,and the reverse knowledge transfer from subsidiaries to parent companies is an effective way to obtain the strategic resources of the host country,enhance the innovation capability and achieve the strategic rise in the value chain.However,emerging countries are faced multiple challenges in the process of reverse knowledge transfer,such as weak basic knowledge,lack of international experience and absence of effective integration methods.So how to use the knowledge of overseas subsidiaries to innovate is an important realistic problem facing emerging Multinational Corporations(MNCs).For this problem,reverse knowledge transfer in emerging MNCs has become a hot issue in the fields of knowledge management,international business and technological innovation.However,current research focuses on the spillover effect at the macro level and less on the micro-mechanism issues.Therefore,it is of great realistic and theoretical significance to explore the micro mechanism of reverse knowledge transfer in the emerging countries.Based on the literature reading and exploratory case studies,this paper constructs an analytical framework of “influencing factors-reverse knowledge transfer-innovation performance”,and then gradually studies the following three closely related questions:(1)What are the factors that influence the reverse knowledge transfer of emerging MNCs?(2)How does the reverse knowledge transfer of different characteristics affect the innovation performance of the parent company?(3)What role does knowledge absorptive capacity and knowledge integration ability play between reverse knowledge transfer and innovation performance? In order to solve the above problems,the paper sends questionnaires to China's manufacturing multinational enterprises and collects data,then uses SPSS 20.0 and Amos 17.0 to analyze the reliability,validity,correlation and multiple regression of the data.We selected automotive manufacturing enterprise A,security enterprise B,injection molding machine manufacturing enterprise C and air separation equipmentmanufacturing enterprise D as case enterprises,then made empirical test based on With-in Case Analysis and Cross Case Analysis.The results show that the strategic orientation and transferring modes of MNCs has a significant impact on reverse knowledge transfer.Reverse knowledge transfer has a significant effect on improving innovation performance of parent company.Knowledge absorptive capacity and knowledge integration ability have a significant moderating effect on tacit knowledge reverse transfer and parent company's innovation performance.The asset seeking orientation of enterprises and the transferring modes such as training,teamwork,staff rotation,conference discussion,sharing sites can significantly promote the reverse transfer of tacit knowledge;the market seeking orientation and the transferring modes such as text material,equipment and technology transfer,social media,shared database can significantly promote the reverse transfer of explicit knowledge.The international experience of parent company has inverted U relationship with reverse transfer of tacit knowledge.The reverse transfer of explicit knowledge plays a mediating role in the asset-oriented and parent company's innovation performance,and reverse transfer of tacit knowledge plays a mediating role in the market-oriented and parent company's innovation performance.The conclusion of this paper has realistic guiding value in the context of“going out” and “the Belt and Road”.In the catch-up and beyond catch-up process,emerging MNCs should improve their knowledge management capabilities,pay attention to R&D investment,enhance knowledge absorptive capacity and maintain sensitive to knowledge.In this way,we can clarify the strategic orientation and use diversified transfer mode to realize efficiently reverse knowledge transfer,and improve the innovation performance of the parent company.