THE METANATIONAL FIRM IN CONTEXT: COMPETITION IN KNOWLEDGE-DRIVEN INDUSTRIES

Abstract

The increasing pace of global competition has recast the balance between multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) needs to protect the knowledge that underlies their competitive advantages and their needs to continually create new knowledge. This essay will discuss MNCs’ knowledge-seeking strategies as industry-level phenomena. I will argue that knowledge-seeking strategies demand a concept of industries both as arenas for competition and as global knowledge networks within which firms collaborate to innovate. Contemporary MNCs face challenges to function not only as self-contained production systems that internationalize in the search for efficiency and markets, but also as open systems globally seeking knowledge and innovations. Metanational strategies and organizations represent a new response to these challenges. I present empirical evidence of distinctive metanational industry opportunities and organizational responses from the emergence of the global flat panel display industry. The essay concludes with a framework that outlines the characteristics of a global knowledge-driven generic strategy as an alternative and synthesis of generic product-driven strategies of cost-leadership and differentiation.

Citation

Murtha, T.P. (2004), "THE METANATIONAL FIRM IN CONTEXT: COMPETITION IN KNOWLEDGE-DRIVEN INDUSTRIES", Hitt, M.A. and Cheng, J.L.C. (Ed.) "Theories of the Multinational Enterprise: Diversity, Complexity and Relevance" (Advances in International Management, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 101-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0747-7929(04)16007-1