Organizational values and knowledge sharing in multinational corporations: The Danisco case Snejina Michailova a, *, Dana B. Minbaeva b,1 a Department of Management and International Business, The University of Auckland Business School, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand b Center for Strategic Management and Globalization, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelaenshaven 24, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark 1. Introduction The effective management of internal knowledge stocks and knowledge flows has been shown to be a key determinant and driver of the performance of multinational corporations (MNCs) (Kogut & Zander, 1992, 1993, 1996). The MNC’s very existence is closely related to its ability to take advantage of differences in knowledge and expertise around the world in terms of exploiting existing repositories of knowledge and combining them to create new knowledge. Consequently, knowledge-based research has increasingly focused on factors that influence the effectiveness of intra-MNC knowledge sharing and transfer, including the characteristics of the knowledge, the properties of the sending and receiving units, the relationships between these units, the transmission channels, etc. (see reviews by e.g., Eisenhardt & Santos, 2003; Minbaeva, 2007, and empirical studies by e.g., Bjo ¨ rkman, Barner-Rasmussen, & Li, 2004; Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; Szulanski, 1996, 2000). Taken together, studies suggest several generalizations about what is known regarding the process of internal knowledge sharing. However, there are several areas that require further elaboration, both theoretically and empirically. One such area is the role and the importance of organizational values as either facilitators or inhibitors of internal knowledge sharing processes. Organizational values are an essential component of organizational culture (Pettigrew, 1979; Schein, 2004). More often than ever before, top managers articulate, nurture and utilize values to shape certain types of individual behavior and to International Business Review 21 (2012) 59–70 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 30 March 2009 Received in revised form 8 November 2010 Accepted 29 November 2010 Keywords: Dialogue Knowledge sharing MNC Organizational values Value enactment Value esposement Value internalization A B S T R A C T While the existing knowledge sharing literature, in general, emphasizes the link between organizational culture and knowledge sharing, it remains rather ambiguous about how certain components of the former may shape the latter. This issue is especially relevant to multinational corporations (MNCs), which typically consist of multiple organizational (sub)cultures and whose existence depends, to a great extent, on sharing knowledge across borders. The present study examines the influence of one key component of organizational culture – organizational values – on knowledge sharing. From 2003 to 2007, we studied Danisco, a Danish MNC, to examine the processes of espousement, enactment and internalization of a core organizational value – dialogue. In particular, we studied how these processes influence knowledge sharing behavior among employees. We collected original empirical data using content analysis and a questionnaire-based survey among 219 managers and employees in 11 countries in four continents. We argue that knowledge sharing behavior is not influenced by organizational values per se but by the degree of their internalization by organizational members. ß 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +64 9 373 7599; fax: +64 9 373 7477. E-mail addresses: s.michailova@auckland.ac.nz (S. Michailova), dm.smg@cbs.dk (D.B. Minbaeva). 1 Tel.: +45 3815 2527; fax: +45 3815 3035. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Business Review jo ur n al ho mep ag e: www .elsevier .c om /lo cate/ib u s rev 0969-5931/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ibusrev.2010.11.006