IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ijecbs/v9y2002i1p117-138.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Beyond the M-form': Towards a Critical Test of the New Form

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Gooderham
  • Svein Ulset

Abstract

This paper critically examines Bartlett and Ghoshal's claim that a radical new organizational form, distinctly different from the M-form both in terms of its structure and psychological underpinnings, may be observed among transnationals. The main theoretical dimensions of the M-form and the 'New Form' are delineated and compared within the context of the discourse between Transaction Costs Economics (TCE) and the Knowledge Based Approach on organizational advantage. Thereafter empirical evidence centred on ABB is extended and re-examined. On the basis of this analysis the thesis of an emergent new form is found to be unsupported. It is thus reasonable to assume that any organizational advantage transnational companies may possess still resides in hierarchical governance as identified by TCE and outlined in its multinational M-form application. To the extent to which it exists, normative social control has a secondary status.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Gooderham & Svein Ulset, 2002. "'Beyond the M-form': Towards a Critical Test of the New Form," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 117-138.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ijecbs:v:9:y:2002:i:1:p:117-138
    DOI: 10.1080/13571510110103010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13571510110103010
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13571510110103010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robin Marris & Adrian Wood (ed.), 1971. "The Corporate Economy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-01110-0, October.
    2. Bruce Kogut & Udo Zander, 1992. "Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 383-397, August.
    3. David J. Teece, 2008. "Technology Transfer By Multinational Firms: The Resource Cost Of Transferring Technological Know-How," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Transfer And Licensing Of Know-How And Intellectual Property Understanding the Multinational Enterprise in the Modern World, chapter 1, pages 1-22, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Oliver E. Williamson, 1971. "Managerial Discretion, Organization Form, and the Multi-division Hypothesis," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Robin Marris & Adrian Wood (ed.), The Corporate Economy, chapter 11, pages 343-386, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. David J. TEECE, 2008. "TRANSACTIONS COST ECONOMICS AND THE MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE: An Assessment," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Transfer And Licensing Of Know-How And Intellectual Property Understanding the Multinational Enterprise in the Modern World, chapter 20, pages 427-451, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Anil K. Gupta & Vijay Govindarajan, 2000. "Knowledge flows within multinational corporations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 473-496, April.
    7. Charles W. L. Hill & Michael A. Hitt & Robert E. Hoskisson, 1992. "Cooperative Versus Competitive Structures in Related and Unrelated Diversified Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 501-521, November.
    8. Bruce Kogut & Udo Zander, 1993. "Knowledge of the Firm and the Evolutionary Theory of the Multinational Corporation," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 24(4), pages 625-645, December.
    9. Tony S. Frost, 2001. "The geographic sources of foreign subsidiaries' innovations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 101-123, February.
    10. Oliver E. Williamson, 1999. "Strategy research: governance and competence perspectives," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(12), pages 1087-1108, December.
    11. Raymond Vernon, 1966. "International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 80(2), pages 190-207.
    12. Julian M Birkinshaw & Allen J Morrison, 1995. "Configurations of Strategy and Structure in Subsidiaries of Multinational Structure," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 26(4), pages 729-753, December.
    13. Williamson, Oliver E, 1981. "The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 1537-1568, December.
    14. Whittington, Richard & Mayer, Michael, 2000. "The European Corporation: Strategy, Structure, and Social Science," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199242085.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Birgitte Grøgaard & Helene Loe Colman & Inger G Stensaker, 0. "Legitimizing, leveraging, and launching: Developing dynamic capabilities in the MNE," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 0, pages 1-21.
    2. Kim, Bongjin & Prescott, John E. & Kim, Sung Min, 2005. "Differentiated governance of foreign subsidiaries in transnational corporations: an agency theory perspective," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 43-66, March.
    3. Birgitte Grøgaard & Helene Loe Colman & Inger G Stensaker, 2022. "Legitimizing, leveraging, and launching: Developing dynamic capabilities in the MNE," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(4), pages 636-656, June.
    4. Chi, Tailan & Nystrom, Paul C. & Kircher, Philipp, 2004. "Knowledge-based resources as determinants of MNC structure: tests of an integrative model," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 219-238.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anoop Madhok & Anupama Phene, 2001. "The Co-evolutional Advantage: Strategic Management Theory and the Eclectic Paradigm," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 243-256.
    2. Dellestrand, Henrik & Kappen, Philip, 2011. "Headquarters Allocation of Resources to Innovation Transfer Projects within the Multinational Enterprise," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 263-277.
    3. Wu, Yan & Strange, Roger & Shirodkar, Vikrant, 2022. "Lateral knowledge transfer and foreign affiliate performance: The importance of affiliate strategic roles," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    4. Hashai, Niron, 2009. "Knowledge transfer considerations and the future of the internalization hypothesis," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 257-264, June.
    5. Singh, Jasjit, 2008. "Distributed R&D, cross-regional knowledge integration and quality of innovative output," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 77-96, February.
    6. Zheng Zhao & Jaideep Anand & Will Mitchell, 2001. "A Network Perspective on Inter-Organizational Transfer of R&D Capabilities: A Study of International Joint Ventures in Chinese Automobile Industry," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 362, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    7. Pengfei Li & Harald Bathelt, 2018. "Location strategy in cluster networks," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 49(8), pages 967-989, October.
    8. Lee, Jeoung Yul & Jiménez, Alfredo & Bhandari, Krishna Raj, 2020. "Subsidiary roles and dual knowledge flows between MNE subsidiaries and headquarters: The moderating effects of organizational governance types," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 188-200.
    9. Heather Berry, 2017. "Managing valuable knowledge in weak IP protection countries," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(7), pages 787-807, September.
    10. Klaus E. Meyer & Chengguang Li & Andreas P. J. Schotter, 0. "Managing the MNE subsidiary: Advancing a multi-level and dynamic research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 0, pages 1-39.
    11. O'Higgins, Ciara & Andreeva, Tatiana & Goya, Nekane Aramburu, 2022. "The hows and whys of foreign operation mode combinations: The role of knowledge processes," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(2).
    12. Dinur, Adva & Hamilton III, Robert D. & Inkpen, Andrew C., 2009. "Critical context and international intrafirm best-practice transfers," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 432-446, December.
    13. Alex Eapen & Rekha Krishnan, 2019. "Transferring Tacit Know-How: Do Opportunism Safeguards Matter for Firm Boundary Decisions?," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 715-734, July.
    14. Zheng Zhao & Jaideep Anand & Will Mitchell, 2005. "A Dual Networks Perspective on Inter‐Organizational Transfer of R&D Capabilities: International Joint Ventures in the Chinese Automotive Industry," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 127-160, January.
    15. Michailova, Snejina & Mustaffa, Zaidah, 2012. "Subsidiary knowledge flows in multinational corporations: Research accomplishments, gaps, and opportunities," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 383-396.
    16. Rabbiosi, Larissa & Santangelo, Grazia D., 2013. "Parent company benefits from reverse knowledge transfer: The role of the liability of newness in MNEs," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 160-170.
    17. Crespo, Cátia Fernandes & Lages, Luis Filipe & Crespo, Nuno Fernandes, 2020. "Improving subsidiaries' innovation through knowledge inflows from headquarters and peer subsidiaries," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(4).
    18. Paul Almeida & Jaeyong Song & Robert M. Grant, 2002. "Are Firms Superior to Alliances and Markets? An Empirical Test of Cross-Border Knowledge Building," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 147-161, April.
    19. Maximilian Palmié & Marco Zeschky & Stephan Winterhalter & Philipp Walter Sauter & Naomi Haefner & Oliver Gassmann, 2016. "Coordination mechanisms for international innovation in SMEs: effects on time-to-market and R&D task complexity as a moderator," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 273-294, February.
    20. Thomas Hutzschenreuter & Ingo Kleindienst & Christina Guenther & Martin Hammes, 2016. "Speed of Internationalization of New Business Units: The Impact of Direct and Indirect Learning," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 849-878, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ijecbs:v:9:y:2002:i:1:p:117-138. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIJB20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.