It is widely acknowledged that innovation is one of the pillars of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and that
technological knowledge from different host locations is a key factor to the MNEs’ competitive advantages
development. Concerning these assumptions, in this paper we aim to understand how the social and the
relational contexts affect the conventional and reverse transfer of innovation from MNEs’ subsidiaries
hosted in emerging markets. We analyzed the social context through the institutional profile (CIP) level
and the relational context through trust and integration levels utilizing a survey sent to 172 foreign
subsidiaries located in Brazil, as well as secondary data. Through an ordinary least squares regression
(OLS) analysis we found that the relational context affects the conventional and reverse innovation transfer
in subsidiaries hosted in emerging markets. We however did not find support for the social context effect
