The Influence of Organizational factors on Innovative Knowledge Implication for MNCs Automobile in Thailand

Abstract

The paper proposes a model explaining the link between organization context in subsidiaries of automobile MNCs and innovative knowledge transfer in roles of multinational corporations in Thailand that can make a strategic contribution in MNCs’ network for innovation performance and global innovation. In organizational MNC factors, this study explores the concept of local innovation, internal/external integration capacity and strategic alliances/partnership from international business literature to a manufacturing context, become an integral part of organizations’ business strategies.

Three research objectives were derived to guide the entire research and examine how the important concepts in the role of innovative knowledge transfer in fostering knowledge quality and how integrated innovation capacity of an organization. Specifically, the first objective was to investigate the conceptualizations of local innovation, internal/external integration capacity, strategic alliance/partnership and to explain the potential of innovative knowledge transfer dimension as knowledge replication and knowledge adaptation becoming to the efficiency of innovation performance and global innovation for MNCs automobile in Thailand. The second objective is to state with a review of several literature in field of organizational context and innovative knowledge transfer to compose a set of contracts were subsequently validated through a primary survey based on a structured questionnaire on a sample size of 380 respondents from the automobile industrial domain in Thailand. And the third objective is to contribute to the essential of organization factors and innovative knowledge transfer through a theoretical contribution of this research and provide the practical implications to innovation performance and global innovation.

Measurement development is one of the major objective and research contribution of the study. A quantitative approach was used to achieve this objective. This research development instrument based on literature reviews and conduct with quantitative methods were questionnaire survey and construct analysis. The collected data was analyzed by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A measurement scales were finalized by employing 20 items to measure 4 dimension of organization factors, 10 items to measure 2 dimension of innovative knowledge transfer, 9 items to measure 2 dimension of company performance. Additionally, the development measurement could contribute to theoretical implications.

The data was collected from five MNCs automobile industry in Industrial Estate in Thailand and analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling analysis (SEM). The structural model was used to assess the hypothesized relationship between latent variables for achieving the first objective of this study. Two endogenous variables consist of local innovation, internal integration capacity and two exogenous variables consist of external integration capacity and strategic alliance/partnership. The results verify that relationship strength by 12 hypotheses were derived based on the identified constructs and were subsequently validated has a significant positive impact on the validating the hypotheses, it was observed that while organizational contexts was positive associated with innovative knowledge transfer. Moreover, it was also observed that both innovative knowledge transfer and the quality of knowledge were positively to innovation performance and global innovation.

This study contributes to the theoretical advancement by a theoretical model of innovative knowledge transfer is mainly interested in positive evidence in favor of a moderator effect of innovative knowledge transfer as knowledge replication and knowledge adaptation on the relationship between local innovation, internal/external integrated capacity, and strategic alliance/partnership in MNCs organization and innovation performance and global innovation. The results reveal that both of replication knowledge and adaptation knowledge were tested as the mediators the relationships between the independent variables and dependent variable.

Interestingly, the findings provide important implications for MNCs automobile in Thailand to understand the relationship between organizational factors and the significant dimension of innovation knowledge that supported by local innovation, internal/external integrated capacity, and strategic alliance/ partnership, which can serve as a guideline for the company to appropriately develop its innovation strategies. Nonetheless, the limitations of the results were discussed, and the important recommendations were provided for the future study.

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