اثرات انتقال ستاد فرماندهی به شرکت تابعه بر بهره برداری استراتژی بازاریابی

The transfer of locally created marketing strategies worldwide represents a key competitive advantage for multinational corporations (MNCs). Although a research topic of much interest, empirical content of past studies is scarce. Absorptive capacity studies typically test direct effects of either the transfer capacity of the strategy's initiator or the recipient's ability to process and exploit the strategy on related learning outcomes. Mixed findings allow the possibility of more complex relationships. This study examines the relationships between MNC headquarters and marketing units located in subsidiary firms using a sample of 213 marketing managers. The study systematically explores linear, interaction, and quadratic effects within a structural equation modeling paradigm. The findings indicate that the relationship between a MNC headquarters' transfer capacity and a subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity on the strategy's exploitation is one of mediation and moderation. The subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity is a key mediating variable and headquarters' transfer capacity moderates the effects of this variable on the exploitation of the marketing strategy by the subsidiary's unit.

In the field of strategy, widespread agreement exists that the long-term prosperity of organizations lies in their ability to identify and share strategic assets (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000 and Teece et al., 1997). This perspective is most relevant for the multinational corporation (MNC), where the diffusion of strategic knowledge along lateral and hierarchical flows between geographically distant subunits represents a key source of competitive advantage (Cantwell and Mudambi, 2005, Foss and Pedersen, 2002 and Mudambi, 2002). In this context, marketing functions serve as boundary spanning links between customers and other organizational units within the MNC (Schlegelmilch and Chini, 2003: 216). Although marketing functions located in MNC subunits typically create strategic knowledge in their own cultural contexts, they also heavily source this knowledge from other parts in the MNC and subsequently need to balance global strategies with a feasible local application. Marketing strategies are “sticky” because they typically evolve in specific cultural contexts, which make a transfer across time, space, and culture difficult for both the initiator and the recipient (Szulanski, 1996 and Szulanski, 2003). Researchers on absorptive capacity give interesting insights and useful suggestions on how knowledge receiving units can enhance the ability to absorb external knowledge (Jansen, Van den Bosch, & Volberda, 2005). Other studies point to the dual embeddedness of MNC organizational units (they belong to the MNC network and are simultaneously situated in local markets) and highlight that being embedded in multiple contexts affects a unit's ability to create and absorb external strategies (Meyer et al., 2011 and Uzzi, 1996). Despite these advances, however, studies are comparably quiet in regard to the role of the knowledge source in international strategy transfer and absorption. This is surprising, considering that Cohen and Levinthal (1990: 131) explicitly highlight in their seminal paper on knowledge absorption that the intensity of effort by the knowledge source is critical. This paper takes the view that the effort by the knowledge source is especially important for the transfer of strategies between organizational units, because unlike some external knowledge absorptions (i.e., unintended knowledge spillovers) within an organization, the knowledge initiators usually have an active interest in diffusing knowledge to other parts of the organization due to the shared organizational benefits this transfer promises (Grant & Baden-Fuller, 1995). Due to the socially complex nature, cultural dependence, and highly tacit character inherent in marketing strategies, the intensity of effort by a strategy initiating unit is likely to be critical for the ability of the recipient unit to absorb the strategy. Studies that have investigated the knowledge transfer process between and within organizations typically illustrate the transfer efforts by a knowledge sender, the ability (and motivation) to absorb knowledge by the receiver, and the knowledge implementation as a simple mediated process where the impact of the knowledge source on knowledge implementation is mediated by the ability to absorb (Jansen et al., 2005, Minbaeva et al., 2003 and Zahra and George, 2002). This paper proposes that this process is more complex and responds to recent calls for more systematic, empirical research on the transfer and absorption of specific knowledge within the MNC (Kotabe et al., 2007 and Martin and Salomon, 2003). By empirically investigating specific source–recipient paths in the transfer of strategic marketing practices, this paper is one of the first to combine empirical testing of knowledge transfer capacities of the source, and processing and exploitation of a marketing strategy by the recipient unit in one process model and represents an initial effort to test domain-specific knowledge absorption in an intra-firm context (Volberda, Foss, & Lyles, 2010).

This study offers several conclusions that have substantive implications for knowledge transfer and absorption within the MNC. First, this study is one of few (Lane et al., 2006 and Phene and Almeida, 2008) that addresses recent calls to empirically test specific knowledge absorption processes in an intra-firm context. Second, this study proposes and empirically finds novel relationships between the knowledge source and stages of the target's capacity to process and exploit in a specific knowledge absorption process. In particular, this study investigates both cognitive and exploitative parts of the absorptive capacity concept. Third, the moderated-mediation path highlights the importance of examining a number of relationship paths between knowledge source and absorption dimensions at the level of the recipient for the context of intra-firm strategy exploitation. Bringing clarity to past studies, the effect of MNC headquarters' transfer capacity and the processing capacity of the subsidiary marketing unit on marketing strategy implementation effectiveness is one of mediation as well as moderation. The subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity accounts for the relationship between headquarters' transfer capacity and successful strategy exploitation at the subsidiary. Further, headquarters' transfer capacity determines the strength of the relationship between the marketing unit's processing capacity and successful strategy integration. The findings suggest a moderated-mediation path where the mediating path of the subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity, which is responsible for producing the effect of headquarters' transfer capacity on subsidiary performance, depends on the extent of headquarters' inputs. The potency of the intermediating variable that the subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity represents depends on the moderating role of headquarters' transfer capacity. This finding is both interesting and novel not just on a methodological level, considering that the majority of prior studies illustrate the relationship between headquarters to subsidiary knowledge transfers as one of a sequential, mediating nature (Hewett and Bearden, 2001 and Roth and Nigh, 1992) without testing whether headquarters' transfer capacity also influences knowledge absorption processes at a different stage in the transfer. Besides immediate empirical contributions, the results also strengthen existing research on business unit strategy, given that improving performance in subunits represents an imperative for MNCs (Tsai, 2001). Most international marketing strategies are difficult to comprehend and exploit for marketing units located in a MNC subsidiary as they originate in a different social context. The findings of this study suggest that although the subsidiary marketing unit's capacity to process an international marketing strategy depends on the intensity of efforts headquarters puts into the transfer process, actual transformation from cognitive comprehension into an applied strategy that is part of the subsidiary's routines and processes depends also on the intensity of transfer capacity by the parent firm. The role of headquarters' transfer capacity affects the process at more stages and in different ways than existing general models of external knowledge absorption depict (Jansen et al., 2005 and Zahra and George, 2002).