The effect of distance and barriers to Intra-Multinational International Collaboration

Abstract

Nowadays multinational enterprises are not simply competing on size and scale anymore. It becomes more and more important to have global presence and to be able to use the capacity and knowledge of the multinational enterprise in every region. Therefore international collaboration within the multinational enterprise, to share and leverage knowledge, is very important to compete with other multinationals. Nevertheless, distance and barriers can have an effect on international collaboration within the multinational, and multinationals are searching to find a way to battle the negative effects of distance and barriers to international collaboration. This thesis studies the effect that distance and barriers can have on Intra-multinational International Collaboration (IMIC).