Internal and External Factors on Firms’ Transfer Pricing Decisions: Insights from Organization Studies

Well understood in economics, accounting, finance, and legal research, transfer pricing has rarely been comprehensively explored in organization management literature. This paper explores some theoretical explanations of transfer pricing within multidivisional firms drawing insights from various organizational theories – primarily institutional theory, transaction cost economics, and social networks – to develop a conceptual model of transfer pricing. This model focuses on the nature of multidivisional firms’ internal transfers, internal and external technological environments, and internal and external social environments. We highlight the importance of transfer pricing as a key strategic dimension to understand intra-firm flows and their associated costs.theory, value, transfer pricing; intra-firm flows, multidivisional firm.

Organizing International Technological Collaboration in Subcontractor Relationships An Investigation of the Knowledge-Stickyness Problem

Technological knowledge is often claimed to be context-bound and sticking to local surroundings. This paper investigates how technological knowledge can be exchanged in international subcontractor relationships, using relationship-oriented organizational practices. Five hypotheses concerning such practices are tested. It is shown that the use of relationshiporiented practices varies with exports and the active development of subcontractors in product and process development activities. Moreover, international development-oriented subcontractors are more likely to use interpersonal exchange, electronic data interchange and formalized contracts than other types of subcontractors. Research implications as well as managerial implications are derived.Subcontracting, knowledge, international division og labour

Knowledge acquisition for the internationalization of the smaller firm: content and sources

Internationalization process research emphasizes accumulated experience and networks as sources of knowledge for internationalization. Our understanding, however, as to what this knowledge is in practice for smaller firms, the challenges they face in acquiring it, and how they address those challenges is limited. Integrating organizational learning concepts with our theoretical understanding of the small firm internationalization process, we develop a new framework for understanding knowledge acquisition processes, which are examined with a case study of 10 Scottish internationalizing firms. We find smaller firms may not have relevant experience or useful networks, and rely on sources rarely recognised before. Firms used recruitment, government advisors and consultants to acquire indirect experience. Recruitment is a source of market and technological knowledge and government advisors and consultants a source of internationalization knowledge. Accessing internal information is important for firms that have internationalized. Our integrated theoretical framework identifies knowledge content and sources that are critical for internationalization, but that may be absent

Embodied Knowledge Transfer Comparing inter-firm labor mobility in the music industry and manufacturing industries

This paper adds new knowledge to the phenomenon of transferring embodied knowledge through labor mobility by means of a comparative study of the entertainment and manufacturing industries. Explorative in nature, the paper takes advantage of unique data on the Danish labor market (i.e. IDA) to investigate labor mobility patterns for the two selected industries and to detect internal differences within industry segments and regarding creative intensive and invention activities in particular. We use the music industry as a proxy for the entertainment industries.Embodied knowledge transfers, labor market dynamics, inter-firm mobility, creative intensive and invention activities, entertainment industries, manufacturing industries

Learning from environmental actors about environmental developments: the case of international organizations

This article makes a case for viewing international governmental organizations (IOs) as corporate agents capable of learning. In doing so, it attempts to go beyond prevailing conceptions of IOs as means or settings for multilateral negotiation and bargaining. The proposed theoretical framework argues from an organizational learning perspective. By integrating notions from neo-institutionalism and policyanalysis it tries to capture the impact of IOs' publicness on learning processes. The focus is on IOs' relations with stakeholders and constituencies for the development and implementation of transboundary policies. These interactions are seen as a means to learn about external demands, expectations and expertise. Their impact on the internal dynamics in IOs tends to be of a dual nature: enhanced adaptability in its margins and buffering the organizational core from environmental fluctuations. Hence, some skepticism is appropriate in assessing IOs' capacity to engage in profound changes as a result of learning. It rests on the contention that the social constitution of the organization-environment nexus and its linkages with intraorganizational processes is of crucial importance for IOs' ability to learn about environmental changes and developments. Emphasis is placed on the contested and controversial nature of knowledge absorption and the limiting effect of administrative routines and procedures on IOs' absorptive capacity. -- Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, internationale gouvernmentale Organisationen als lernfähige korporative Akteure zu betrachten. Damit soll gezeigt werden, dass internationale Organisationen weder als Instrumente mitgliedstaatlicher Interessen noch als Arenen multilateraler Verhandlungsprozesse hinreichend verstanden werden können. In der Perspektive des Organisationslernens wird danach gefragt, wie internationale Organisationen im Zuge des Interaktionsgeschehens mit Akteuren aus ihrem Umfeld über äußere Veränderungen und Trends lernen. Dabei geht es um die Vermittlung als auch die Interpretation der von außen an internationale Organisationen herangetragenen Erwartungen, Anforderungen, Ideen und Wissen. Ziel des Papiers ist die Entwicklung eines theoretischen Analyserahmens, der das Interaktionsgeschehen zwischen internationalen Organisationen und den ihre Umwelt repräsentierenden Akteuren als Auslöser für organisationale Lernprozesse begreift und gleichzeitig auch institutionelle, kulturelle und politisch-interessenbezogene Bedingungen berücksichtigt. Die aus dem Spannungsfeld zwischen Organisation und Umwelt resultierenden Lernprozesse sind dualer Natur: Erhöhte Anpassungsfähigkeit in den Grenzbereichen internationaler Organisationen geht mit Abpufferung des Organisationskerns von Umweltfluktuationen einher. Diese Einschätzung gründet auf der Prämisse der sozialen Konstituierung des Organisations-Umwelt Nexus und dessen Verbindungen mit organisationsinternen Prozessen. Darüber hinaus wird die politische Bedingtheit organisationaler Wissensprozessierung und der Einfluss administrativer Routinen und Verfahren auf die Aufnahmefähigkeit internationaler Organisationen betont.

Blueprint for the Dissemination of Evidence-Based Practices in Health Care

Proposes strategies for better dissemination of best practices through quality improvement campaigns, including campaigns aligned with adopting organizations' goals, practical implementation tools and guides, and networks to foster learning opportunities

Knowledge source preferences as determinants of strategic entrepreneurial orientation

In the knowledge intensive context, firms’ capacity to integrate external and internal sources of knowledge becomes an important competitive advantage and may distinguish entrepreneurial from conservative firms. This paper explores the proposition that differences in strategic entrepreneurial orientation (EO) across firms may be significantly determined by differences in firms’ preferences regarding knowledge sources. Our research is based on 208 firms operating in knowledge intensive industries in six Central and East European countries (CEEC). We identified three types of firms in terms of patterns of sources of knowledge: external R&D knowledge based firms, in-house knowledge based firms and value chain dependent firms. By using different proxies or different dimensions of EO, we have found that the EO is strongest in firms based on external knowledge. Firms with inhouse based knowledge have an intermediate strength of the EO, and firms dependent on value chains are the least entrepreneurially oriented. We have also found moderate support for grouping different proxies of EO into three dimensions identified in literature – innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking. Value chain firms are not pro-active, have the lowest innovativeness, and are the most risk averse. External knowledge based firms are the most active in all three dimensions of EO, while inhouse knowledge based firms are in an intermediate position. Our results point to strong systemic features of entrepreneurial activities; i.e., EO is inherently different in different sub-populations of firms depending on their patterns of sources of knowledge. It seems that these patterns operate as a moderating factor between performance and the EO, which explains mixed results from the literature