Practical Knowledge Transfer Processes in Labour-Intensive Service Multinationals

Abstract

This dissertation contains a qualitative case study research that takes an integrated facility services multinational as the setting, focusing on two services—catering and cleaning—in three subsidiaries—India, Spain and the UK. The author investigates and discovers how the types of knowledge tied to the services practice and characteristics of the subsidiaries and services such as their age, context and development are related to the knowledge transfer mechanisms these subsidiaries and services use. The dissertation contains also a research on the literature on organizational learning and knowledge management, to which she contributes with an indagation on the epistemological foundations of the main trends on these topics, a classification of types of knowledge, a taxonomy of service firms and a typology of knowledge transfer mechanisms. All these insights are used in the subsequent empirical research.