Right Person at the Right Place: How IPR at the Host Location Influences the Internal Division of Innovative Labor in Multinational Enterprises

49 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2014

See all articles by Anand Nandkumar

Anand Nandkumar

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad

Kannan Srikanth

Singapore Management University - Management Department; University of Southern Denmark - Strategic Organization Design unit (SOD)

Date Written: September 21, 2014

Abstract

The internationalization of R&D activity by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is increasing, with a recent big push towards emerging economies. Understanding how MNEs organize collaborative R&D across geographies is therefore an important area of scholarship. However, little attention has been paid towards understanding the factors that influence the division of innovative labor within an MNE across geographies – the internal division of innovative labor. Drawing on the literature that shows that strong protection for intellectual property (IP) is important for the efficient division of innovative labor between firms, we argue and show that differences in effectiveness of IP protection between international locations significantly influences the internal division of innovative labor, especially for R&D aimed at the host market when compared to R&D aimed at the home market.

Keywords: Division of innovative labor, Intellectual Property Regimes (IPR), R&D offshoring, Multinational R&D strategy, global organization of work, knowledge spillover

Suggested Citation

Nandkumar, Anand and Srikanth, Kannan, Right Person at the Right Place: How IPR at the Host Location Influences the Internal Division of Innovative Labor in Multinational Enterprises (September 21, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2499158 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2499158

Anand Nandkumar (Contact Author)

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad ( email )

Hyderabad, Gachibowli 500 019
India

Kannan Srikanth

Singapore Management University - Management Department ( email )

50 Stamford Rd
Singapore, 178899
Singapore

University of Southern Denmark - Strategic Organization Design unit (SOD) ( email )

Campusvej 55
Odense, DK-5230 M
Denmark

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