The development of social capital for knowledge-sharing purpose in multinational corporations

Abstract

The major challenge for MNCs that contain knowledge-rich foreign subsidiaries is to utilize those resources and capabilities for the MNC as a whole. While structure has a role to play there is a growing acceptance that the existence of "social capital" is critical. However, social capital does not arise of itself. As such the issue at the frontier of MNC research is now not so much whether social capital matters but how to fashion effective "dynamic capabilities" for its development. This paper contains a number of contributions from leading international management scholars to a symposium on this issue. The symposium formed part of the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, August 2007.