Multinational companies are crucial actors in a global knowledge-based economy, combining the advantages of global and locally coordinated production and innovation strategies with specific regional and national factors. This book questions how MNCs can best exploit institutionally embedded knowledge, explores the utilization of external institutionally embedded knowledge in corporate innovation processes, and addresses the challenges of embeddedness. The expert contributors draw on managerial, economic, geographic and sociological perspectives to explore the essential roles of regional and national knowledge infrastructures and the cultural and political environment of MNCs. They build upon, update, and extend the discussion on the regional and national embeddedness of MNCs with new country case studies and comparative analyses, focusing on the relationship between innovation in companies and regional studies. Significantly, the book also establishes a link between two important debates that have hitherto been largely disconnected: regional studies and international business studies separately address issues that fall within the scope of the book, but do not provide an integrated analysis of the embeddedness of MNCs.

This path-breaking book goes some way to fill this gap in the literature and as such, will prove invaluable to academics, R&D managers, regional policy makers and students with an interest in international business, business economics, regional studies and organization studies.

Contributors: P. Ahrweiler, B.T. Asheim, E. Baier, C. Barmeyer, P. Cooke, J.R. Diez, B. Ebersberger, N. Gilbert, J. Guimon, B. Hancke, M. Heidenreich, S.J. Herstad, S. Iammarino, B. Klement, K. Koschatzky, J.-P. Kramer, K. Kruth, E. Marinelli, J. Mattes, R. Narula, A. Pyka, D. Rehfeld, M. Schilperoord, Ö. Sölvell, S. Strambach