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The role of international assignees' social capital in creating inter-unit intellectual capital: A cross-level model

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Abstract

We conceptualize international assignees as informational boundary spanners between multinational enterprise units, and develop a cross-level model that explores how assignees' social capital translates into inter-unit intellectual capital. First, as knowledge brokers, assignees create inter-unit intellectual capital by linking their home- and host-unit social capital, thereby enabling cross-unit access to previously unconnected knowledge resources. Second, as knowledge transmitters, assignees' host-unit social capital facilitates their creation of individual intellectual capital, which, in turn, translates into inter-unit intellectual capital. We conclude that individual social capital needs to be explicitly transferred to the organizational level to have a sustained effect on inter-unit intellectual capital.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Niels Noorderhaven, the three anonymous JIBS reviewers, and JIBS Departmental Editor Helen De Cieri for their helpful feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

    B Sebastian Reiche

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Anne-Wil Harzing

  3. Department of Management & Organizations, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, USA

    Maria L Kraimer

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  1. B Sebastian Reiche
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  2. Anne-Wil Harzing
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  3. Maria L Kraimer
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Correspondence to B Sebastian Reiche.

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Accepted by Helen De Cieri, Departmental Editor, 15 February 2008. This paper has been with the authors for three revisions.

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Reiche, B., Harzing, AW. & Kraimer, M. The role of international assignees' social capital in creating inter-unit intellectual capital: A cross-level model. J Int Bus Stud 40, 509–526 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2008.86

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