The Impact of Culture on University–Industry Knowledge Interaction in the Chinese MNC Context

Introduction

As tasks, work and projects are increasingly conducted in globally distributed contexts, seeking for and integrating complementary knowledge and building networks across geographic and cultural borders are increasingly becoming the firm’s key strategy and part of operations for going international and gaining global competitiveness (Awazu, 2007; Buckley & Carter, 1999; Buckley et al., 2006; Kodama, 2003; 2005; Lindqvist et al., 2007). Due to the changing competitive landscape, external links and networking directed at the transfer and creation of knowledge, are of crucial importance for the innovative performance of firms and the advancement of new technologies (Johnston & Paladino, 2007; Santoro & Gopalakrishnan, 2000; Schartinger et al, 2002). Undoubtedly, universities play an important role in such networked innovation systems, and complementary knowledge interaction increasingly becomes a key driver for university–industry (U–I) collaboration (Lin, 2005; Santoro & Gopalakrishnan, 2000; Wang & Lu, 2007). However, many cross-border knowledge interactions including knowledge transfer projects have failed because of cultural barriers (Almeida et al., 2002; Bröchner et al., 2004; Holden, 2002; Lam, 1997; Moitra & Kumar, 2007; Siegel et al., 2003; Simonin, 1999).

Culture may enable or coerce good knowledge interaction depending on how well we know it. Previous studies have identified the following cultural barriers to or influences on effective knowledge interaction: cultural variation across nations in terms of the dimensions of individualism–collectivism and verticalness–horizontalness (Bhagat et al., 2002), cross-cultural differences in language, conception and prioritization (Kohlbacher & Krähe, 2007), differences in Hofestede’s cultural dimensions of individualism/ collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity (Lucas, 2006), national or societal settings in terms of knowledge structure and work system (Lam, 1997), language and social knowledge in the form of understanding others’ behavior (Buckley et al, 2005), cultural awareness of Chinese guanxi (personal connection) and mianzi (face) in cross-border knowledge transfer (Buckley et al, 2006), Chinese guanxi in terms of trust, relationship commitment, and communication (Ramasamy et al., 2006), cultural distance in the transfer of marketing know-how in international strategic alliances (Simonin, 1999), and the alignment of different professional or functional cultures of executives, engineers and operators (Schein, 1996). In the specific context of U–I knowledge interaction, the impact of culture and related factors are examined and acknowledged with a focus on fundamentally different cultures between two types of organizations particularly in goal formation, time orientation, language and assumptions (Cyert & Goodman, 1997; Elmuti et al., 2005), agreeing on priorities and timescales, publishing in the public domain, and academic laissez-faire approach vs industrial lack of flexibility (Barnes et al, 2002), and cultural traits in the institutionalization of U–I knowledge transfer activates (Santoro & Gopalakrishnan, 2000). Nevertheless, the existent studies remain much fragmented in cultural exploration, and are primarily concerned with technology and knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is one form of knowledge interaction. Research on other types of more interactive knowledge integration such as collaborative knowledge creation, and especially in the Chinese context is seriously lacking.