There is a limited amount of studies, which investigate how different managerial
practices may influence the behavior of knowledge senders in multinational
corporations (MNCs). This paper addresses this gap by looking at whether and how
certain expatriation practices can enhance a) the ability and b) the willingness of
expatriates to transfer the knowledge they possess from the headquarters to the
respective subsidiaries. By stepping on two bodies of literature, namely the
knowledge transfer literature and the expatriation literature, we suggest that MNCs
may enhance the expatriates’ willingness to transfer their knowledge through the
employment of long-term expatriation practices. Expatriates’ ability to transfer
knowledge may be increased through their involvement in short-term assignments,
frequent flyers arrangements and international commuters practices. We test
empirically the hypotheses on the basis of data from 92 subsidiaries of Danish MNCs
located in 11 countries.
Key words: knowledge transfer, MNC, expatriation, dissemination capacit
