What a feeling: An empirical study of the nexus of emotion and cultural friction in the context of intra-MNC knowledge transfer

This thesis examines the interactions between emotion and cultural friction in the context of intra-MNC knowledge transfer.

The research is based on 60 interviews, 9 month fieldwork and documents collected from one largest Chinese I.T. service company. A qualitative single case study framed with an interpretive lens was used as research design.

The thesis has examined the source, process and consequence of discrete emotions in cross-culture knowledge transfer. It shows that emotion is a crucial link to explain why some managers perceive cultural friction as stressful, other frame it as an opportunity to learn. And a cultural pre-disposition towards certain emotional experiences is also revealed

This study is the first empirical investigation on discrete emotions in knowledge transfer within MNC. It provides a unique but complementary approach to understand culture friction and cross-cultural behavior.