Centres of Excellence in Multinational Companies: The Case of Denmark

An important body of literature on multinational corporations (MNCs) relates to how they are organised, and especially the role of the subsidiaries within the organisation. (see Doz and Prahalad, 1981; Egelhoff, 1988; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989; Forsgren, 1989; Ghoshal and Nohria, 1989; Ghoshal and Bartlett, 1990; Gupta and Govindarajan, 1991, 1994; Forsgren and Johanson, 1992.) One theme in recent writings is the need to change from a situation of the firm as a bundle of headquarters-subsidiary relationships into a more complicated system with reciprocal interdependencies between units in different countries (Hedlund, 1986, Bartlett et al., 1990). Connected with this view is the assumption that the competitiveness of the modern MNC is characterised by a shift away from the initial stage of proprietary knowledge and brand labels to the exploitation of international activities through economies of scale and scope, learning and operating flexibility (Kogut, 1990).