Knowledge transfer between marketing functions in multinational companies: a conceptual model

Abstract

A key competitive advantage of multinational companies lies in their ability to exploit locally created knowledge worldwide. This implies that such companies have to be able to transfer knowledge within organizational networks characterized by separation through time, space, culture and language. Given the pivotal importance of knowledge transfer for the competitiveness of multinationals, it is remarkable that the process of transferring knowledge effectively across dispersed units of multinational corporations has only attracted little and rather fragmented research interest. What appears to be missing is a unifying framework that serves as a basis for a research agenda. Our paper aims to develop such a framework. Specifically, we propose a conceptual model of knowledge transfer between marketing functions within multinationals and advance research propositions for future empirical testing.