• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.121-132
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• 2016

Purpose - This study has the following objectives. First, it seeks to build an integrated model that can analyze the path through which headquarters, subsidiary competence, and knowledge transfer performance influence subsidiary performance. Second, it analyzes the influence of the specificity of technology as a moderating effect factor on knowledge transfer process. Third, it will conduct an empirical analysis on distributive manufacturing MNEs and suggests an implication for companies that actually need technological localization. The difference of this study are as follows. First, unlike the existing studies, this study can expand a theoretical discussion as it uses subsidiary performance as the dependent variable. Second, it sets the specificity of technology as a moderating effect factor, not an antecedent, and can draw a theoretical implication. Research design, data, and methodology - This study built a path analysis model to identify the influence of the disseminative capacity and absorptive capacity of distributive manufacturing MNEs on subsidiary performance. Based on the previous studies, it set 19 items as 5 latent variables, and established 6 hypotheses by including the moderating effect of the specificity of technology between them. The final 203 companies were selected as analysis samples through a survey questionnaire. For empirical analysis, the study used PLS (Partial Least Square) that is based on structural equation model. Results - The empirical analysis result demonstrated that both headquarters' disseminative capability and subsidiaries absorptive capacity had a positive influence on knowledge transfer performance. Knowledge transfer performance also had a positive influence on subsidiary performance. In the analysis of moderating effect, the specificity of technology acted as a significant moderating variable only between knowledge transfer performance and subsidiary performance; it did not show a statistically significant moderating effect among disseminative capability, absorptive capacity, and knowledge transfer performance. Conclusions - The empirical analysis results of this study demonstrate the importance of disseminative capability and absorptive capacity in knowledge transfer to subsidiaries from the distributive manufacturing MNEs in Korea. The analysis on the moderating effect indicates that the specificity of technology in Korean companies influences on the process of making achievement by using the transferred knowledge.