Proceedings of 8th Annual London Business Research Conference
Imperial College, London, UK, 8 - 9 July, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-922069-28-3
Task Interdependence and Team Leadership in MNC
Knowledge Creation: A Comparison of R&D and Marketing
Euk Hwan Kim*
Various project teams engage in knowledge creation activities and
this structure causes a need for coordination between them. (Nonaka
et al., 2006) A framework of Zárraga and Bonache (2005) specifically
shows that high-care team relationships result in more successful
knowledge outcomes. There is a question about how high-care team
relationships are configured for knowledge outcomes in different
subsidiaries. The MNC knowledge transfer literature takes a less
interest in this issue because it has more focused on macroorganizational hierarchical structures. My study, on the other hand,
explores micro-organizational team relationships in local knowledge
processes. It is aimed at clarifying task interdependence and
leadership styles associated with knowledge outcomes in MNC
projects. More importantly, this study compares R&D and marketing
subsidiaries so that it can investigate their distinctive leadership
styles. Interviews with 35 MNC employees and a questionnaire
survey with 1040 MNC employees were performed. Multivariate
analysis controlled by team size was carried out for survey data. In
conclusion, two different leadership types, ‘task leadership’ and
‘maintenance leadership’ (Gladstein, 1984), are linked to the different
levels of task interdependence in R&D and marketing projects.
Leadership fits based on functional contexts are necessary to
effectively care for team members and manage team outcomes.
JEL Codes: M10 and M19
*
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. Email: Euk.Kim@warwick.ac.uk