Diploma Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.0 (A), European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) (FB BWL), language: English, abstract: In the world of today, business is no longer limited by national boundaries. The majority of the world’s large corporations perform a significant portion of their activities outside their home countries. The rapidly emerging global economy creates numerous opportunities for businesses to expand their revenues, drive down their costs and boost their profits. At the same time, markets have become fierce battlegrounds where firms have to fight aggressively for market share with domestic and foreign competitors. It is commonly accepted that one of the primary sources for competitive advantage of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in this globalized business environment is their ability to transfer superior knowledge at the international level1 and to create a “learning organization”2. To succeed, or at least survive, in the global market-place, organizations need to adapt quickly to the changing environment and must commit themselves to permanent learning. This paper presents a general overview of the process of international knowledge transfer within multinational enterprises. It deals with the problems of organizational knowledge creation and sharing. A particular emphasis is placed on the implications for international human resource management practices in managing the international transfer of employees, since global assignments are recognized hierin as the most important mechanism of transferring tacit knowledge3 across borders. As the sharing of easily codifiable knowledge is relatively easy to manage, the means of transferring it are not focused on in this study. [...] 1 See, for instance, Kogut, B. and Zander, U. (1992): „Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology“, Organizational Science, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 383-397; Kogut, B. and Zander, U. (1993): „Knowledge of the Firm and the Evolutionary Theory of the Multinational Corporation“, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 24, pp. 625-645; Björkman, I. and Forsgren, M. (1997): „The Nature of the International Firm. Nordic Contributions to International Business Research“, Handelshojskolens Forlag, p. 71. 2 See, for instance, Garvin, D.A. (1993): „Building a Learning Organization“, Harvard Business Review, July/August, pp. 78-91. For definition of the learning organization see p. 23. 3 For definition of the tacit knowledge see p. 22.

Explores the role of expatriates in the mobilization, nurturing and sharing of knowledge between their original country and the MNCs' host countries. This title includes topics that are related to the management of knowledge and the tools, methods and practices that can be customized to facilitate the transfer of knowledge in MNC settings.

Globalization and the development of multinational organizations have led to an increase in the number of people spending part of their lives living and working in foreign countries. While the contemporary literature has focused on organizational expatriates sent overseas by their employers, self-initiated expatriation is becoming an important area of study in its own right. This edited volume offers a holistic picture of self-initiated expatriation and the groups that pursue it, emphasizing many reasons for departure including career development and career capital.

Inpatriates have become an important means of knowledge transfer within multinational companies. As such, the authors of Expatriates: Perspectives and Challenges of the 21st Century attempt to extract information regarding the knowledge transfer processes and inpatriates' behavioral patterns. To provide a rich understanding of these processes from the inpatriates' perspective, critical incidents reported by 22 inpatriates are content-analyzed.The expansion of expatriates has been associated with multinational corporations' offshore production strategies. As livable built environments can attract and retain these expatriate workers in the host city, this compilation investigates how foreign direct investment flows are associated with human capital flows in a case study of Koreans in Suzhou, China.The concluding chapter discusses how, despite corporate globalization and the evolution of technology over the last 2 decades, we have observed a continuous increase in the number of employees deployed on international assignment. In fact, according to Finaccord, expatriate growth has been at a compound annual rate of 5.8% since 2013 and by 2021 the number forecast is 87.5 million. Since scholastic study abroad programs are now included in the curriculum of most post-secondary schools it is no surprise that 8.5% of expatriates are in this sector.