Moderating effects of MNCs’ country of origin in the relationship between technology recipient characteristics and degree of inter-firm technology transfer

While realizing that technologies, knowledge, and competencies are the technology
supplier’s main source of competitive advantage, the current inter-firm technology transfer
(TT) issue in international joint ventures (IJVs) revolves around the extent of degree of
technologies that are transferred by the suppliers to recipient partners in terms of tacit and
explicit knowledge. Previous studies on intra-firm knowledge transfer have acknowledged
the significant influence of technology actors and facilitators/barriers such as the
knowledge transferred, source, recipient and contextual/relational characteristics in the
knowledge transfer process. Although previous studies have established the significant
relationships between technology transfer determinants and technology transfer, however,
these relationships could possibly have been influenced by the MNCs’ country of origin
(MNCCOO). Based on the underlying knowledge-based view (KBV) and organizational
learning (OL) perspectives, the main objective of this paper is to empirically examine the
moderating effects of the MNCs’ country of origin in the relationships between technology
recipient characteristics: absorptive capacity (ACAP) and recipient collaborativeness
(RCOL) and two distinct dimensions of degrees of technology transfer: degrees of tacit and
explicit knowledge within IJVs. Using the moderated multiple regression (MMR), the
theoretical models and hypotheses in this study were tested based on empirical data
Moderating Effects of MNCs’ Country of Origin in the Relationship between
Technology Recipient Characteristics and Degree of Inter-Firm Technology Transfer 338
gathered from 128 joint venture companies registered with the Registrar of Companies of
Malaysia (ROC). The results revealed that the MNCs’ country of origin has significantly
affected the relationships between technology recipient characteristics (absorptive capacity
and recipient collaborativeness) and degree of explicit knowledge; where the relationship
was found stronger for Asian MNCs than Western MNCs. However, the MNCs’ country of
origin did not moderate the relationship between technology recipient characteristics and
degree of tacit knowledge.