다국적기업 현지자회사의 동적역량: 결정요인과 성과

This studies addresses the dynamic capabilities of multinational subsidiaries. Specifically,this study has two research purposes. The first purpose is to figure out the factors that influence the dynamic capabilities of foreign subsidiaries, and the second is to assess the effectiveness of the dynamic capabilities of foreign subsidiaries. Furthermore, we analyse the future expected performance to check out the sustained competitive advantages derived from the dynamic capabilities. The definition of dynamic capabilities is somewhat overlapping, ambiguous and inconsistent,as noted by Zahra et al.(2006). However, most studies agree that one common attribute of the dynamic capabilities is related to innovation capability and manipulation capability of the resources or resource bases to accommodate environmental changes in a timely fashion,which in turn enables the firm to sustain competitive advantages. This kind of dynamic capabilities is more required for foreign subsidiaries that operate in different business environments. On the basis of the analysis of 127 foreign subsidiaries operating in Korea, it was found that dynamic capabilities have significant effects on both present performance and future expected performance. This result implies that foreign subsidiaries should pursuit innovation and manage resource bases to accommodate environmental changes in a timely fashion. In other words, foreign subsidiaries should devote to improve and develop new product, production process, marketing method, and business process to cope with rapidly changing environments in host countries. In this regard, foreign subsidiaries should keep on renewing resource base to have the innovation proceed successfully. If necessary, foreign subsidiaries try to acquire the imperative resources from the parent firm or other sister subsidiaries. Regarding the determinant of dynamic capabilities, on the other hand, it was found that the dynamic capabilities of foreign subsidiaries are facilitated by such factors as the parent firm’s entrepreneurial culture, the strategic importance and autonomy of subsidiaries, as expected. This result implies that the role of subsidiary, in addition to the role of parent, is important for the construction of its dynamic capabilities. The parent firm should encourage its key foreign subsidiaries to take an initiative for accumulating their dynamic capabilities in host country markets. Finally, the dynamic capability is operationalized by two sub-components, namely innovation capability and resource acquisition/renewal capabilities, in this paper. However, other important sub-components of dynamic capabilities are expected to develop in the future study.