GEGBI Guest Lecture

Historical changes in the determinants of competence creation in multinational corporations' subunits

Friday 3 February 2012, 3.15PM to 4.45pm

Speaker: Professor John Cantwell, Rutgers University

Location: Management and Law Building, LMB/002X

Abstract

The amount and the nature of the creative innovative activity of MNC subunits have changed over time. Historically, subunits were devoted mainly to adaptation or assembly of products developed in the home country of the MNC parent company. Thus, subunit creative activity was driven mainly by their own local system of innovation. However, they evolved over successive decades, increasingly gaining a more internationally integrated creative role. Hence, the availability of wider knowledge and resources, made accessible through the international connectedness of the local system in which the subunit is located, has increasingly gained importance. Within this context, while the role of the parent company in subunit creative activity has been marginal historically, it has recently gained greater importance as combining core company knowledge with new discoveries requires a closer integration of subunit creative activities with those of the MNC group.

Biography

John Cantwell is Professor of Management and Global Business at Rutgers University, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Studies, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK. Previously he was Chair in International Economics at the University of Reading, Visiting Professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", the University of the Social Sciences, Toulouse, and the University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna. He as also served as the President of the European International Business Academy (EIBA), a EIBA Founding Fellow, a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), Vice President of the AIB, and associate editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

For further information please contact Dr. Helen Geddes: hg518@york.ac.uk, ext. 5025.