Cross-Border Value Creation

The project task has been to provide research based knowledge on how firms can go about to enhance cross-border value creation. Focus has been on integration of business operations across activities that are located in separate countries. Research has been conducted on four specific topics: 1)Overarching integrative capabilities, 2)Knowledge integrative capabilities, 3)Global talent integrative capabilities, and 4)Boundary spanning capabilities. Project work has taken place over a 4 year period and was finalized by the end of 2019. The institutional responsibility for the project has been with SNF (Center for Applied Research at NHH), and the research has been organized in the research environment of NHH in collaboration with academic research internationally, and with the four corporate partners - Deloitte, DNB, Laerdal Medical and Telenor. All the corporate partners have contributed with empirical input and experience based knowledge, which has strengthened the process of research and the presentation of research findings. The research has been presented and discussed on different scientific arenas with the national and international research community. The intention has not been to provide one answer to one specific research question. The purpose has rather been to develop research based knowledge on how firms may combine and utilize experience from operating in many different countries to strengthen their competitive advantage, and furthermore how these firms may balance the need for integration to exploit scale economies across countries with the need for local adaptiveness. Such questions have been addressed in many different areas. The research and research findings have been published continuously throughout the project, primarily as articles in scientific journals and in scientific books.This has resulted in more than 40 scientific publications, which all are publicly available. More popularized versions of research perspectives and research findings have been disseminated in more than 80 presentations for firms, government and the public. In addition, there are written more than 30 master thesis at NHH with thematic relevance to the project.

Prosjektet har frembragt kunnskap om hvordan internasjonalisering utfordrer virksomhet som ivaretas av bedrifter, og hvordan ledelse og organisering kan bidra til å håndtere slike utfordringer. Det er spørsmål som bedriftspartnerne i prosjektet har ment er viktig for deres egen utvikling, og som dessuten er relevante for store deler av norsk næringsliv. Som sådan har prosjektet potensielt stor nytteverdi, og bedriftspartnerne har nyttiggjort seg kunnskap og erfaringer fra prosjektet på ulike måter. Men det betyr ikke at effekten av prosjektet er særlig stor hvis effekt skal måles som prosjektets betydning for den økonomiske utviklingen hos bedriftspartnerne eller i næringslivet i Norge. Prosjektet har bidratt til å styrke den faglige kompetansen om internasjonale forretninger i NHH-miljøet, herunder kontakten med internasjonal forskning. Det spiller over i undervisning og utdanning, først og fremst ved NHH.

The project's point of departure is the internationalization of firms and their value chains. Firms with an industrial base in Norway are increasingly emerging into multinational enterprises (MNE), while others outsource parts of their value chains to partner with foreign firms. This challenges the managerial and organizational capabilities of the firms to enable them to leverage whatever unique strategic capabilities they possess globally. With reference to the literature, such integrative capabilities are classified in four key integrative challenges, concerning cross-border intra-firm capabilities and cross-border inter-firm capabilities. The project will investigate such integrative capabilities in cooperation with four industrial partners: Deloitte, DNB, Laerdal Medical and Telenor. Internal cross-border challenges concerns MNEs. The overall integrative challenge is referred to as overarching integrative capabilities and involve the ability to create appropriate structural, organizational and psychological linkages across business units. These linkages underpin and support two further key integrative capabilities: the capability to integrate knowledge across operations in order to maximize synergies; and the capability to integrate talent allocation across the MNE. In addition, information technology and the internet have triggered an increased trend towards internationalizing value chains, where outsourcing of critical functions involve long-term stategic partnering and the capability to forge more subtle, tacit governance arrangements. This concerns companies in general, and not just MNEs. We refer to these inter-firm capabilities as boundary spanning capabilities. The four industrial partners will provide access to their organizations for case studies to analyze these challenges empirically. Research will be disseminated to industry throughout the project and to the research community internationally. The research will be summarized in a book.