Learning by teaching technological knowledge: conceptual skill development in Japanese overseas subsidiaries

In recent years, knowledge transfer studies have produced a great deal of knowledge on technology transfer in MNCs. However, these studies have focused exclusively on the effects on the recipients of knowledge and not on the effects on the suppliers of knowledge. To fill this research gap in previous studies, this study takes the concept of “learning by teaching” proposed in pedagogy as a clue and demonstrates for the first time the effects on the suppliers of technological knowledge. This study (1) sets the international horizontal transfer of production technology systems among overseas subsidiaries as the research object, (2) obtains original data from 391 Japanese multinational manufacturing subsidiaries through a mail questionnaire survey, and (3) analyses the data through multiple regression analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results revealed that overseas subsidiaries of MNCs can make their production technology systems explicit (making them easier to teach) through technical guidance and thereby develop the conceptual skills of their engineers and operators. The results of this study open up the possibility of developing theories on (1) updating the knowledge base at the supplier of knowledge and (2) building the relationship between the supplier and the teaching materials in knowledge transfer.