Managing local knowledge assets globally: the role of regional innovation relays

The strategic location of regional headquarters for multinationals in Africa: south Africa as a host country

“…Even for companies that believe in the deployment of expatriates, there will be a demand for locals that have the correct set of skills. This is becoming more important as MNEs recognize the value of local knowledge assets and regional innovation relays as identifi ed by Asakawa and Lehrer (2003). Multinationals are increasingly reconceptualized as a distributed and differentiated networks governed by cooperative systems (Ambos & Birkinshaw, 2010) and thus RHQs need to function as mobilizers of knowledge which requires appropriate levels of human and social capital.…”

“…The importance and value of RHQs in the academic literature has generally focused on RHQs in industrialized countries (Asakawa & Lehrer, 2003;Doz & Prahalad, 1984;Hewett, Roth, & Roth, 2003;Piekkari, Nell, & Ghauri, 2010) although there has been an increasing focus on the Asian markets too (Holt, Gray, Purcell, & Pedersen, 2000;Lasserre, 1996). The result is that we do not yet fully possess an overall framework for understanding how value and decisions are devolved, how location decisions are made (certainly less so than with FDI fl ows), and how their structures and strategies are evolving to accommodate the growth in emerging markets.…”

MNE Entrepreneurial Capabilities at Intermediate Levels: The Roles of External Embeddedness and Heterogeneous Environments

“…As with research into MNEs in general, corporate entrepreneurship in MNEs has typically been discussed in the literature as a global-local dichotomy (Asakawa & Lehrer, 2003).…”

“…Specifically, a significant opportunity to contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurial activities in MNEs arises from the lack of research into the role played by intermediate units located between the global corporate headquarters and the local subsidiaries (Asakawa & Lehrer, 2003). Therefore, this paper aims to develop our understanding of the important role of intermediate management levels for entrepreneurship in MNEs.…”

“…This level of analysis is particularly relevant in the context of MNEs. In fact, a number of authors have identified the need for more work on entrepreneurship at this level (Ambos & Schlegelmilch, 2010;Asakawa & Lehrer, 2003;Rugman & Verbeke, 2001;Verbeke et al, 2007).…”