Knowledge transfer in international acquisitions: A retrospective

In this Retrospective, we summarise and discuss the findings of our 1999 JIBS paper “Knowledge transfer in international acquisitions”, and we consider how research in this area has evolved over the last decade. The paper's key contribution was to show how the post-acquisition integration process in a sample of three international acquisitions led to the creation of a “social community”, characterised by two-way knowledge-sharing between the acquirer and acquired companies. We discuss how the timing of this publication, as an early contribution to the knowledge-based perspective on the firm, helped its visibility; and we consider the boundary conditions around our findings.

[1]  P. Rosenzweig.  Managing Acquisitions: Creating Value Through Corporate Renewal , 1991 .

[2]  G. Hedlund.  A model of knowledge management and the N‐form corporation , 2007 .

[3]  G. Susman,et al.  An Assessment of the Scientific Merits of Action Research. , 1978 .

[4]  Julian Birkinshaw,et al.  Managing the Post-acquisition Integration Process: How the Human Iintegration and Task Integration Processes Interact to Foster Value Creation , 2000 .

[5]  A. Denisi,et al.  Communication with Employees Following a Merger: A Longitudinal Field Experiment , 1991 .

[6]  B. Kogut,et al.  What Firms Do? Coordination, Identity, and Learning , 1996 .

[7]  A. Rugman,et al.  The International Operations of National Firms: A Study of Direct Foreign Investment , 1978 .

[8]  J. Johanson,et al.  The Internationalization Process of the Firm—A Model of Knowledge Development and Increasing Foreign Market Commitments , 1977 .

[9]  G. Hedlund.  The hypermodern MNC—A heterarchy? , 1986 .

[10]  K. Lewin.  Action Research and Minority Problems , 1946 .

[11]  Stephen Tallman.  Managing across Borders: The Transnational Solution , 1990 .

[12]  L. Empson.  Merging Professional Service Firms , 2000 .

[13]  J. Birkinshaw,et al.  INNOVATION IN MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS: CONTROL AND COMMUNICATION PATTERNS IN INTERNATIONAL R&D OPERATIONS , 1998 .

[14]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Knowledge Creating Company , 2008 .

[15]  D. Mesch,et al.  The Impact of Flexible Scheduling on Employee Attendance and Turnover. , 1990 .

[16]  J. Birkinshaw.  Acquiring intellect: Managing the integration of knowledge-intensive acquisitions , 1999 .

[17]  Julian Birkinshaw,et al.  Special Issue: Knowledge, Knowing, and Organizations: Knowledge as a Contingency Variable: Do the Characteristics of Knowledge Predict Organization Structure? , 2002, Organ. Sci..

[18]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology , 1992 .

[19]  Julian Birkinshaw,et al.  Knowledge transfer in international acquisitions , 1999 .

[20]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge of the firm and the evolutionary theory of the multinational corporation , 1993 .