Tools and Techiques for Global Leadership Development in Norwegian MNEs

Norwegian firms in all industries are increasingly investing in value generating activities abroad. This project is aimed particularly at those Norwegian multinational enterprises (MNEs) that contain knowledge-rich subsidiaries. These are faced by the cha llenge of how to utilize those knowledge-based resources and capabilities for the MNE as a whole in order to enhance performance. Such resources and capabilities, if efficiently integrated and subsequently reconfigured across the MNE, will lead to signifi cant savings and synergies and therefore increased competitive advantage. However, integration is problematic because the various units of such MNEs are not only embedded in different cultural contexts but have their own business agendas (Forsgren et al., 2005) which together lead to silo-mentalities. A substantial body of research has established that a core driver of knowledge-sharing in MNEs is the degree to which social capital (including shared systems of meaning and trust) has been developed acros s the MNE. The key research and development challenge is now how to facilitate the development of social capital through global leadership development. The overall objective of the project is therefore to develop a range of tools and techniques to meet th e rapidly increasing needs of Norwegian MNEs for global leadership development that generates MNE-wide leveraging of resources and capabilities, thereby achieving enhanced performance. These tools and techniques will not be developed at random but will be iteratively generated on the basis of extgant theory by management researchers (SNF/NHH) and management consultants (AFF A/S). A separate development project will be conducted within AFF, as parallell development work will be undertaken within the thre e MNCs.