ABSTRACT University of Edinburgh Business （抽象的爱丁堡大学的业务）.pdf

ABSTRACT Industrial globalization presents the need for companies to expand into new territories world-wide. Research has attributed difficulties in doing so largely to problems and difficulties in the process of knowledge transfer, and has recently pinpointed the essential role of implementing knowledge from other parts of the world, and the learning required to do so. An ethos of knowledge transfer, implementation and learning are needed for international business success. Chinese multinational companies are new and significant phenomena, are newly internationalizing, and are culturally ill-disposed to such an ethos. This study will employ longitudinal ethnographic research to identify if and how they reconcile this conundrum, to advance understanding concerning the link between knowledge and learning and international business development. BACKGROUND The knowledge source, the knowledge transfer process, and the knowledge recipient have been categorized as the three principle elements of a knowledge-management system (Wiig ， 1995). As knowledge retention and distribution have always been the concern of organizations and their managers, sophisticated techniques and systems have been designed for managing the knowledge source and knowledge transfer (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Wiig, 1995). One of the main recent streams of research in international business is concerned with knowledge-management within multinational corporations, especially knowledge transfer between parent firm and subsidiaries. For these firms, and for research on them, cross-border knowledge transfer and implementation have become hot topics. For most multinational companies, transferring knowledge is important for self-improvement and development,