Knowledge acquisition of local managers: Its antecedents and effectiveness

Szulanski (1996) noted that the difficulty of knowledge transfer is determined partly by the context or the environment in which the transfer takes place (including the organizational context and the relationship between the source and the recipient). In ad- dition, the measurement of cross cultural skill construct is not strong as we adapted the scale of Cultural Intelligence from Ang et al. (2007) with 20 items and we reduced this to three items due to low factor loading. The more care- ful treatment of this cross cultural construct should be considered in the future. This study focuses on the characteristics of the source and the recipient, but not on the or- ganizational context or the socio-cultural en- vironments. Further research should include these factors. We are particularly intrigued by the finding of the insignificant effect of ex- patriates’ cross-cultural skills and experience on knowledge acquisition. That finding needs further investigation, especially in the light of recent arguments that regardless of perceived cultural similarity between host and home countries, expatriates need similar time and process to adjust (Selmer and Lauring, 2009). It is suggested that future studies should incor- porate cultural identities of participants as a factor in knowledge acquisition. In addition, there may be vertical relation- ships among those independent variables; for example, the international experience of expa- triates can develop higher cross-cultural skills in expatriates. This study is limited to the inves- tigation of the horizontal causal relationships leading to performance improvement, which is a common interest in MNCs. Future studies should incorporate more comprehensive fac- tors in order to fully understand which has the most salient impact on knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, the factors included in this study may have different impacts on the knowledge acquired by individuals, depending on the stage of the relationship between local managers and expatriates. The factors may also be of vary- ing importance. For example, the cross-cul- tural skills of an expatriate are more important in the early stage of a relationship with a local manager (Hippler, Brewster and Hasleberger, 2015). This becomes less important as the two parties work together over time. On the oth- er hand, openness to learning is important for all stages of the relationship. This study only examines learning and knowledge acquisition based on the cross-sectional data and does not include longitudinal data. Finally, this study mainly uses self-reported, perceptual data. Objective data, or at least data from other sources (e.g. line managers’ reviews of local managers’ performance) might be more useful. Nevertheless, this study has broken new ground by providing empirical evidence that the specific characteristics of both expatriates and local managers affect the tacit knowledge acquired by local managers based on the dyad- ic data and the individual tacit knowledge con- tributes to his or her performance. In conclusion, our study confirms the impor- tance of tacit knowledge by documenting its significant impact on the performance of local managers. We also confirm that expatriates are an effective way to transfer tacit knowledge in multi-national corporations. In the knowledge acquisition process, the individual characteris- tics of knowledge receivers are more important than those of knowledge providers. Journal of Economics and Development Vol. 18, No.3, December 201681 Appendix 2: Measurement items and validity assessment Model Fit: RMSEA= 0.046, IFI = 0.978, CFI= 0.977, GFI=0.915 Appendix 1: Profiles of participating respondents APPENDIX Number of respondents classified by nationalities Number Percent Japanese 20 29.9 Western European 9 13.4 Asian 10 14.9 Taiwanese 13 19.4 American and Canadian 8 11.9 South Korean 7 9.0 Eastern European 1 1.5 Total No. of expatriates 68 100.0 Total No. of Vietnamese 109 Total 176 Explicit Professional Knowledge. α = 0.715 1. I understand the technical issues or knowledge related to specialized fields (marketing, production, etc.) 2. I understand the new managerial techniques and skills Loadings 0.627 0.731 Tacit Professional Knowledge. α = 0.822 1. I understand the procedures and steps necessary to perform/utilize specialized knowledge 2. I understand the procedures to perform/use those managerial techniques and skills 0.816 0.731 Cultural Knowledge. α = 0.731 1. I understand the foreign cultures and tastes 2. I understand the values of those cultures 0.736 0.787 Cross Cultural Skills. α = 0.602 1. I am aware of the cultural knowledge I use when interacting with people with different backgrounds 2. I enjoy interacting with people from different cultures 3. I change my behavior when a cross-cultural situation requires it. 0.729 0.543 0.572 Openness to Learning. α = 0.639 1. I am always willing to listen to new ideas without judgment and criticism 2. I always take my own initiatives in finding new ideas, making decisions and responsible for those issues. 3. I am always willing to try out new ways of doing things. 0.578 0.678 0.603 References Al Ariss, A. 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