The moderating effect of cultural distance on the cross-border knowledge management and innovation quality of multinational corporations

Abstract

Purpose

The key to the success of multinational corporations’ (MNCs) business models is the improvement of their innovation quality. From the cross-border knowledge management perspective, this paper aims to analyze the improvement path of innovation quality of MNCs and construct the functional path of the relationships among the knowledge creation, knowledge application and innovation quality of MNCs in the cross-border knowledge management process, so as to achieve the success of their business models. Based on this, this paper introduces cultural distance to further analyze how such relationships will change with the cultural distance level.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from Chinese A-share listed MNCs with production operations located in the Asia-Pacific region from 2014 to 2018, this paper constructs a panel data model to test the mediating effect of knowledge application and the moderating effect of cultural distance on such relationships.

Findings

This paper obtains the following research findings: knowledge creation and knowledge application each have a significant, inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation quality; knowledge creation has a significantly positive correlation with knowledge application and knowledge application has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between knowledge creation and innovation quality; cultural distance has a moderating effect on such relationships. The specific moderating direction depends on the extent of the knowledge creation and knowledge application.

Practical implications

The findings are helpful to MNCs’ managers, providing guidance and serve as a reference for them to make strategic decisions on cross-board knowledge management and business models innovation.

Originality/value

The theoretical contributions are summarized as follows: First, it further enriches and expands the theoretical of knowledge management and innovation quality relationship. Second, it further enriches and expands the theoretical framework of knowledge management. Third, it further enriches the theoretical framework of cross-cultural management.

Citation

Duan, Y., Huang, L., Cheng, H., Yang, L. and Ren, T. (2021), "The moderating effect of cultural distance on the cross-border knowledge management and innovation quality of multinational corporations", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 85-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-11-2019-0656