AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER FROM GLOBAL FLAGSHIPS TO LOCAL FIRMS IN GLOBAL PRODUCTION NETWORKS

It is known that global flagships’ capacity and willingness to transfer knowledge in global production networks will affect the knowledge acquisition of local firms. However, the mechanism is not clear enough, or rather scattered, and thus lacks an integrated model for comprehensive conceptualization. Adopting a sample of 105 Chinese firms, we construct an integrated two-stage model to interpret the mechanism of knowledge transfer from global flagships to local firms and find that global flagships’ capacity and willingness to transfer positively impact the knowledge acquired by local firms through the mediation of the knowledge contributed by the global flagships. Organizational distance and local firms’ absorptive capacity affect the knowledge acquired by local firms as well. The influences of the latter two also depend on the different types of ties between global flagships and local firms.