Managing Intersecting R&D Social Communities: A Comparative Study of European `Knowledge Incubators' in Japanese and American Firms
运用齐美尔的交叉群体隶属理论，分析欧洲研发人员在日美企业中的双重社区归属，发现日本企业的民族中心主义虽利于内部知识流动，却阻碍获取外部创新系统的关键知识，而美国企业则更具优势。
Georg Simmel's notion of intersecting group affiliations is used to analyze the situation of European R&D personnel employed by Japanese and American corporations. The fact that foreign R&D personnel belong to multiple research communities poses strategic challenges for global firms. One notable finding concerns the issue of `competitive advantage in the basic research lab'. The traditional `ethnocentricity' of Japanese firms, while facilitating intra-firm tacit knowledge flows, may create obstacles in the ability to access and capture critical knowledge embedded in foreign innovation systems outside firm boundaries. In contrast, `explicit' US firms appear to possess a certain advantage for accessing the knowledge embedded in foreign systems of innovation.