Identity, knowledge and strategy in the UK subsidiary of an Anglo-German automobile manufacturer

International Business Review 21 (2012) 281–292

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Identity, knowledge and strategy in the UK subsidiary of an Anglo-German automobile manufacturer Fiona Moore * School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 16 March 2009 Received in revised form 14 March 2011 Accepted 14 March 2011

This paper uses a qualitative case study of an Anglo-German automobile manufacturing plant to investigate the role played by the strategic self-presentation of national, class and ethnic identities by different groups within the organisation in knowledge management and power relations in multinational corporations (MNCs). I explore this using a ‘negotiated culture’ approach to cross-cultural management. My findings are, firstly, that knowledge management played a crucial part in strategic self-presentation and thus in power relations. Secondly, that an examination of knowledge management activities from this perspective provided a way of analysing the complexity of intergroup interaction in the organisation. Thirdly, that workers as well as managers engage in knowledge management and strategic action. I conclude that a qualitative analysis of knowledge management can help researchers and managers deal with the complexities of social behaviour in organisations, and suggest frameworks for understanding of the impact of identity on knowledge management. ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Cross-cultural management Identity Knowledge management Micropolitics Power Qualitative research methods

1. Introduction While it has long been recognised that knowledge management in international businesses is affected by social behaviour, the literature for the most part focuses on the relationship between knowledge transfer and cultural transfer. A qualitative study of a British automobile plant which was at the time recently acquired by a German multinational corporation (MNC), indicates that different self-identified groups in the organisation – expatriate managers, local managers, and shopfloor managers/workers – employ the possession, transfer, withholding and interpretation of knowledge as part of strategies for gaining power within the acquired organisation, contributing to IB by allowing insights into the complex ways in which multinational organisations are affected by discourses of culture and identity and the role which knowledge management, on the part of workers as well as managers, plays in these ongoing intergroup negotiations. The aims of this paper are, firstly, to investigate the connections between identity and knowledge management in MNCs, secondly, to examine the ways in which knowledge is used in micropolitical power relations within such organisations, and, finally, to consider the role knowledge plays in the process of, in Brannen and Salk’s (2000) phrase, ‘‘negotiating culture’’ within MNCs. This study emerges from debates on the role of various sorts of ‘‘culture’’ in knowledge management in transnational organisations (see Holden (2002) for a useful summary), and will thus not only contribute to the literature critiquing the focus on national culture as a means of explaining power relations in contexts in which more than one national group operates in an organisation (cf. Chapman, 1997; McSweeney, 2009) but also to examine one of the key factors at work in the complex operations of ‘‘culture’’ in organisations, to wit, the use of knowledge as currency within such negotiations.

* Tel.: +44 1784 276 116; fax: +44 1784 276 100. E-mail address: fi[email protected]. 0969-5931/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ibusrev.2011.03.003

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2. Knowledge, identity and power: a brief review of the literature In this section, I will conduct a necessarily brief review of the literature on the role of knowledge management as regards cultural transfer and power relations, and, building upon this, propose that the transfer, withholding and manipulation of knowledge forms a part of the strategic expression of identity, which is in turn a key aspect of negotiating culture in organisations. This paper focuses specifically on the literature on the role of ‘intangibles’ in knowledge management, which has only really begun to be seriously explored in the past ten to fifteen years. ‘Intangibles’ are defined by Buckley and Carter (2002, p. 39) as ‘differences in language, social norms and identities, types of sense making and so on’. One might clarify this by saying that the term refers to all social, cultural and psychological assets/liabilities within a firm. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, p. 19) initially proposed that to be successful, MNCs must be ‘knowledge-creating companies,’ treating employees as a ‘knowledge crew’ whose personal resources can be mustered to the advantage of the organisation, with Wang, Liu, & Li (2009, p. 581), more recently, saying that ‘among all resources potentially useful to a firm, knowledge may be the most important for the firm to create and maintain competitiveness in the market’. Buckley and Carter (1999, p. 80), however, argue that identity and culture can influence whether, and how, knowledge is transferred, saying that ‘gaining value from the intangible assets a firm possesses is a key component in achieving the strongest possible competitive stance’. More recent studies have supported this proposition: Presutti, Boari, & Fratocchi (2007) indicate that social capital plays a role in knowledge transfer; Duanmu and Fai (2007, pp. 452, 458) provide evidence that branch-headquarters knowledge transfer can be affected by the relationship of the two nations involved, as well as by national origin, business culture and language; and Sinkovics, Zagelmeyer, and Kusstatscher (2011) confirm that emotions can play a key role in the success or failure of mergers. Holden (2002), goes further and argues that cultural learning, rather than simply affecting knowledge transfer, is an integral part of it; consequently, he emphasises that culture may well be not so much a barrier to knowledge transfer as an asset (pp. 18–19), and thus that to exclude the role of culture is to overlook a key aspect of knowledge management. Indeed, he argues that culture is knowledge, and that any cross-cultural encounter involves forms of knowledge transfer (pp. 254–255). Intangibles thus appear to have a powerful effect on knowledge management, and vice versa. However, with a few exceptions (e.g. Presutti et al., 2007, Sinkovics et al., 2011), most of the work on this subject has focused on culture generally (and national culture in particular), with relatively little discussion about the impact of other intangibles, such as power relations, personal strategy and, in particular, identity (class, ethnic, etc.), which, in light of recent criticisms of the rigidity of the concept of culture in international business studies (e.g. Holden, 2002; McSweeney, 2009; Symon, Buehring, Johnson, & Cassell, 2008) may contribute a more complex, dynamic perspective. This study thus aims to follow Hong, Snell, and Easterby-Smith (2009, p. 552)’s suggestion that an ethnographic approach is needed to elaborate on the role of intangibles in knowledge management and flesh out these culture-based analyses. I will do so by considering the firm as a complex, dynamic entity, in which power relations take place not through the interaction of rigidly defined cultural ‘billiard balls’ (Brannen & Salk, 2000, p. 458), but following Brannen and Salk’s ‘negotiated culture’ approach, viewing ‘culture’ in organisations as a constantly shifting process in which identity is expressed and negotiated in the context of micropolitical relations in the MNC. Some researchers, particularly in qualitative and/or micropolitical studies, have also highlighted the relationship between knowledge management, strategy and power. In Ferner’s (2000, p. 521) seminal work, he argues that formal bureaucratic systems in organisations are underpinned by informal power relations at the micropolitical level, meaning that what seem like objective decisions are in fact based on informal, subjective power relations. Sharpe’s (2006, p. 333) study of power relations in a factory indicates that these are intermingled with the ways in which different groups identify with their national origins and with their particular subgroups (occupational or otherwise) within the organisation, and Lovett, PerezNordtvedt, and Rasheed (2009, p. 486) argue that the national culture of the parties involved can affect power relations between head offices and subsidiaries. More crucially for our analysis here, Moore (2006) considers how knowledge transfer is instrumental in power relations between expatriate and locally hired managers in a banking organisation, as both groups give or withhold information from each other depending on how they feel it would give them a strategic advantage, and Krakel’s (2005) paper looks at the benefits, for individuals and groups, of withholding knowledge in organisations. However, most such works also tend to focus on national culture to the exclusion of identity-focused discourses: even Geppert’s (2003) study of ‘identity’ and micropolitics in organisations effectively treats ‘identity’ as close analogue of national culture. Furthermore, most of the above work focuses on managers, with little consideration being given to the role of workers in the organisation. There is thus evidence that knowledge management is an important currency in the negotiation of power relations between groups in multinational organisations; a more dynamic view of group boundaries, provided by an identity-focused perspective, can thus provide insights into the complexity of intergroup negotiations and the role which knowledge management plays in these. I would thus predict that, in a multicultural/transnational business environment, the transfer, withholding and manipulation of knowledge will be used as a means by individuals and groups to justify and consolidate their position through the strategic expression of identity. Furthermore, these same actors will affect others through withholding or reinterpreting aspects of this knowledge, thus at the same time forcing new identities upon other groups, and reacting to the ways in which other groups define them. The relationship between identity, knowledge, and power, in a simplified form, can be considered as follows:

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In order to explore the role of identity as a means of micropolitical strategisation, I will take an approach based on the work of sociologist Erving Goffman, which has been a key influence on research on identity in organisations (see Burns, 1992). Many of Goffman’s (1956, 1961, p. 101, 1963, p. 243) works focus on the ways in which people define themselves; he describes individual and corporate actors selecting between expressions of allegiance to maximise their benefits in particular situations. Actors, he says, may define themselves predominantly according to a connection with one group, but within that there is a constant interplay of allegiances to many groups, with different ones prioritised in different situations according to which the actor feels best suits their aims (1961, p. 143). While Goffman has been accused of verging on rational action theory (i.e. the belief that humans always act rationally), people do use symbolic selfpresentation strategically to some extent; one might also argue that to act strategically is not necessarily to act rationally, or even consciously (Burns, 1992, p. 119; Jenkins, 1996, pp. 70–71). One must also note, as Goffman does not, that it is not just that we present ourselves strategically, but that at the same time our self-presentation is being interpreted by, and incorporated into the strategies of, others (Jenkins, 1996, p. 58). The presentation of self thus forms a site of ‘sense making,’ in which culture and its meanings are negotiated (Holden, 2002; Geppert, 2003). Considering knowledge management as a part of the expression of identity can thus cast light on the complexities of intercultural negotiation in organisations. I therefore propose to contribute to our understanding of knowledge and power in organisations by examining the role which knowledge management plays in power relations between workers, local managers and expatriate managers in a recently acquired MNC branch. Through examining ethnographic and interview data on groups of managers and workers in the organisation, I will argue that identity, knowledge management and power relations in organisations are closely linked with each other, suggesting an identity-based framework for understanding cross-cultural relations.

3. Historical and social background to the study 3.1. The setting The plant at which my study was conducted, BMW MINI’s Cowley Works, started out as a British car manufacturer, initially called Morris Motors, in the early 1910s (Newbigging, Shatford, & Williams, 1998, p. 12). In the mid-1990s, after years of financial difficulties, the factory, which by then formed part of the Rover group, was sold to BMW (Scarbrough & Terry, 1996, p. 5), which had itself started out in the early 1910s as a domestically-focused aircraft and, later, automobile manufacturing company, but came to global prominence in the 1970s and 1980s (p. 5). As with the situation outlined in Vince (2006), this takeover, and a subsequent restructuring taking place in the early 2000s, had proved a site of emotional trauma and questioning of identity for managers and workers. The nature of the plant encourages a separation between the workers and shopfloor managers, and the office managers. While the former two are largely to be found in the Body in White (the area where the unpainted car is assembled), Paint Shop or Final Assembly buildings, office managers, with notable exceptions discussed below, can be found in office blocks nearby. The workers do physical labour, while the managers write reports, make presentations, do surveys, and otherwise engage in the conceptual work of the branch. Both groups also have quite different relationships to the product and the firm: asked what it was that they liked about working for BMW, most managers cited ‘pride in the product and BMW’s good reputation,’ while workers cited ‘good wages and good relationships’ (this finding was borne out by responses given by both groups in a 2002 plant-wide employee survey). Geography and attitude to the product thus divide workers and managers. The social composition of the plant is such that there are at least three groups within the organisation – designated by job title and ethnicity as shopfloor managers/workers, British office managers and German office managers – whose members possess distinct sets of knowledge, and which are in a position to jockey for power within the organisation. The fact that these are externally imposed identities is noted and will be discussed in greater detail during the data presentation and analysis. I shall now consider these subgroups within the firm in detail, in terms of their position within Cowley Works, their wider social status, national self-identification, and their issues with regard to knowledge and power, particularly as regards the international nature of the organisation. 3.2. German/expatriate managers The expatriate managers whom I encountered had, for the most part, been sent over for around three years as part of the transition in ownership, to help the plant restructure their managerial hierarchy, physical operations and lean production systems along the lines laid down by Head Office. As such, they were in positions of power, and agents of explicit knowledge transfer. While the managers who I interviewed were all Germans who had subsequently returned to Germany, the company also ran a more generalised international management programme, in which managers of all origins were transferred regularly around the group’s various global operations. For reasons of access, my interviewees within this group were all male managers between the ages of 30 and 45, university-educated and well-off, and generally of high status within the organisation as a whole, who were associated with functions involved in the restructuring of the plant (mainly human resource management [HRM] and general management).

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3.3. British/local managers By contrast, the British managers tended to have been with the plant for a number of years (in some cases, before the change in ownership), and most were from the local area. They were more diverse in terms of age, status and length of time with the organisation than the Germans; however, all but three in my sample (which was fairly representative of the population as a whole) were male, and all were white except for one Anglo-Asian manager. The nature of the takeover also meant that most were in middle or junior management, with the Germans concentrated more in senior management. Again, most of my interviewees were in HRM; their educational qualifications were more variable, and their status within the organisation was generally lower than that of the expatriates. 3.4. Shopfloor managers/workers Finally, the workers, who spanned the entire spectrum of ages from the late teens to the mid-sixties, genders, ethnic and class origins, from university students on their summer breaks, to individuals who had spent thirty or more years in factory work, to former refugees (who included many former managers and skilled professionals). At the time of my fieldwork, the ethnic composition of contract employees in Assembly was slightly over two-thirds white, with the remaining third being approximately evenly divided between black/Afro-Caribbean and Asian associates. The predominant national origin in all three categories was British, but with a sizeable minority of people born outside the UK. Two-thirds of the workforce was contracted through temporary labour agencies, and had similar demographics. There was also a problematic category of assembly-line section managers, or PAMs (‘Process Area Managers’), who, while nominally managers, spent most of their time on the shop floor, and consequently were regarded by managers as forming part of the workforce, and by the workers as part of the management stratum. They were thus a liminal category (see van Gennep, 1960), and will here be considered as straddling the worker-manager boundary. The next lower rank within the factory, the Team Coordinators or TCs, although they had some administrative functions, were perceived to be within the worker camp, being viewed by workers and managers as ‘foremen’ rather than ‘managers’. None of the workers I encountered were formally interviewed, but information regarding their situation was gleaned from informal interviews, participant observation, and interviews with PAMs and Team Coordinators, who spent a lot of time with the workers, and who had often started out as workers themselves. All of the above were male, and all were white bar one Asian Team Coordinator. 3.5. Research methods This article is based partly on participant-observation fieldwork at BMW’s Cowley Works factory in Oxfordshire, UK and partly on in-depth interviews with managers and workers. In 2003, I gained access to conduct a study of gender diversity and staff retention among the workforce. I spent three months working on the line in the Final Assembly Area (usually referred to as ‘Assembly’), as a temporary employee of the firm (known as an ‘associate’) with the knowledge and permission of the management; as the study progressed, I informed the workers in my team. The decision not to inform them initially was taken on the grounds that it might affect manager–worker relations if workers misunderstood the nature of the study; my intention was to inform them once I had gained sufficient knowledge of the norms and values on the assembly line to be able to explain the study in neutral terms. Two tours were also taken of the full plant as an outsider. Detailed fieldnotes were made as soon after each working session as possible, with rough notes being made whenever opportunities arose. Subsequently, I spent twelve months intermittently working with a group of human resource managers on two projects, one involving the development of a management education programme aimed at teaching managers how to use ethnographic techniques in their daily activities, and one aimed at improving managerial practices, both of which were based partly on the research which I had done in 2003. This involved regular meetings with managers and participation in their activities regarding these projects in the role of an outside consultant, and was arguably as close to participantobservation in the managerial sphere as it is possible for an outside researcher to perform in such a company. Detailed notes were taken during or after each meeting. The firm did not ask for confidentiality in publications, and, indeed, given its unique history and position in European car manufacturing, it would be difficult to disguise it. As such, I have opted for partial confidentiality, disguising the identities of interviewees only; the names given are approximations of the ways in which my interviewees preferred to be addressed (thus ‘Herr Braun’ for a German middle manager, ‘Kevin’ for a British junior manager). Formal interviews were conduced with eighteen staff members in total, following Ferner and Quintanilla’s (1998, p. 712) assertion that ‘the in-depth interview. . . is seen as the most appropriate tool for getting at the complex processes of mutual influence between headquarters and subsidiary’. Six were office managers; four were German expatriates; three were shopfloor managers (PAMs) or trainers, and five were Team Coordinators. Most of my interviewees were associated with the Final Assembly Area or general HR management, but there were also three from the Paint Shop and one from Body in White (the area where the unpainted car is assembled). Most formal interviews were recorded, although in a few instances in which the interviewee was not comfortable with the presence of a dictaphone, detailed notes were taken instead. In some cases, follow-up interviews were conducted, normally over the telephone. Informal, unrecorded discussions were held with workers on the line during the period of fieldwork (comprising about fifteen core informants), as well as with the three HR managers with whom I worked on the two projects mentioned above.

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Group interviews were also held with eight shopfloor managers, none of whom formed part of the earlier sample, with two HR managers from the above-mentioned project presiding, with notes being taken. The interviews and participantobservation fieldnotes were then analysed using close reading techniques, from the perspective of an anthropologist trained in the structuralist, Marxist and postmodern schools of thought, who has subsequently worked in the area of critical management studies. As this study is qualitative and ethnographic, the issues of how to ensure validity and reliability require some unpacking. In this case, following Lee’s (1997) definition of reliability as ‘shared systematic variance between a researcher’s phenomenon of interest and its scored measurement’ (p. 146), I have been careful to ensure that the measurements taken and cited here reflect the phenomenon under observation, in this case, the role of identity and micropolitics in knowledge management (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010, p. 78ff.). Taped interviews were transcribed to reflect the recording as accurately as possible; notes on interviews and conversations have been used with a degree of caution, but with the understanding that they reflect a version of events which has interpretative validity as evidence of a participant’s views on the situation at BMW MINI (see Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010, p. 210; Lee, 1997, p. 160). Interviews and notes were carefully analysed to ensure that, where patterns emerged, the extent of these was noted, and the interviews quoted here are done so as exemplars of particular patterns, trends or dominant worldviews among groups in the organisation, with the reasons being indicated in the context in which they are quoted (see Lee, 1997, pp. 154–155; Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010, p. 211). I further tested the study’s validity by comparing my results to those of other researchers on the organisation (e.g. Porter, 2007; Scarbrough & Terry, 1996; Stewart et al., 2009), and through discussing my results with interviewees in the organisation, noting their perspectives on my data and feeding them back into the study. The longitudinal nature of the project also helped ensure reliability of results, as short-term trends can be easily identified as such. While it is true that no two researchers, looking at the same interview transcript, will arrive at exactly the same conclusion (see Lee, 1997, p. 160), there is a significant degree of correlation between my observations and those of others, with differences being explicable as due to differences in the researchers’ standpoints, areas of observation, preferred methodologies, and so forth, suggesting that my observations have validity as an observation of one set of ‘realities’ within the organisation (ibid). I have thus considered means by which to ensure the validity and reliability of qualitative data (see Symon et al., 2008; Lee, 1997). The collection of data thus has a high degree of internal and external consistency, allowing us to consider it as reliable and valid within the parameters generally accepted for qualitative analysis. Qualitative methods, once the issues of reliability and validity have been taken into account, have particular benefits which may be useful in this situation (see Ghauri and Grønhaug, 2010, chap. 12); in particular they are notably well suited to examining micropolitical cases, as indicated by the longitudinal work of Ferner. As Ferner (1997, p. 31) himself notes, ‘survey work needs to be supplemented by careful qualitative case study research to follow through complex linkages, explore processes, and uncover how decisions are really made’. By taking an approach suited to examining the complexity of social relations in MNCs, we can analyse the ways in which identity is strategically expressed. I shall now consider the perspectives of each of the groups in turn. 4. Outside knowledge: the situation of the expatriates In constructing their identities, the German expatriates at the plant presented themselves as the saviours of a small and troubled company, thus following the Goffmanian paradigm of adopting an identity which they believe will show them in the best light. This act of salvation was also, as per the theoretical discussion above, clearly associated with the idea of bringing knowledge to the company. Local managers were frequently portrayed by expatriates as unwilling to solicit knowledge from the workers, where the expatriates presented themselves as willing to engage in such negotiations, as this excerpt from an interview with a former expatriate, now returned to Germany, shows: Herr Braun: The [local] managers all stayed in their nice buildings, their nice offices, and never went to the line, never talked to the people at the line, there was these class differences, and that was something I changed. Interviewer: So you went to the line and talked to the people? Herr Braun: I went to the line; I talked to all the people. Everyone. I was there, everywhere, in every corner. . . the managers stay in the offices, ‘hopefully nobody calls, and I don’t have to talk with the associates.’ This manager implied that he saw a tacit alliance between expatriates and workers against the local managers, with both having privileged knowledge of the true workings of the company, as in this excerpt from later in the same interview: Have your workshops with your associates on the line. They know what to do. Force your local management to have everything in perfect shape and that is also in the rules how to do it. . . the people on your line should have a major influence. Herr Braun thus, as with Wang et al.’s (2009, p. 582) evidence that mergers and acquisitions require the acquirer to connect with local knowledge flows, described a strategy of gaining information from the workers through forming a knowledge-transfer alliance with them against ‘ignorant’ local managers, but at the same time having to keep the local

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managers on side, as with Presutti et al.’s (2007, p. 29) observations about the crucial nature of acquiring local knowledge early in an international venture. Knowledge sharing is thus a means of presenting oneself, in Goffmanian fashion, as the company’s saviours, bringing valuable knowledge to the beleaguered branch, and as a currency by which alliances are formed between disparate groups of people in the organisation. However, in keeping with Jenkins’ (1996) revisions of Goffman’s theory to take power relations into account, this identity was not monolithic, but was internally contested. Herr Braun’s ‘‘white-knight’’ self-identification also tacitly acknowledges that an international arrival from Head Office could be seen as a destructive intruder, and is also constructed in part in reaction to the local managers’ own identifications as embattled guardians of local knowledge (see below), with the image of the Germans as rescuers as a means to counteract externally imposed images of the Germans as intruders. Herr Braun’s selfpresentation as a ‘‘saviour’’ was thus in competition with British managers’ presentation of him as an ‘‘invader,’’ and thus his knowledge alliances with the workers are seen as a means of using identity and knowledge management to shore up his position. Knowledge management within the company was also portrayed by expatriate managers in interviews as a global bestpractice system, but at the same time as tied to the local, justifying the Germans’ presence in the branch while also allowing the branch its own identity. Herr Braun, for instance, explicitly spoke in terms of local culture as a medium for the transfer of knowledge in a global system: You have clear rules; you have an order system. . . and that is everywhere the same. And that means if you have a clear image of a production system, you can be successful in Britain, in Zimbabwe, in Germany. Maybe you need, in Britain, a different set of flow charts or a different way of training the people, adapting to their local behaviour, and you need for example, in Zimbabwe, maybe signs of elephants or rhinos to show them that, OK, these part numbers meet this part numbers. . . but if you remember that everywhere people are the same, and if you measure in the same way, you can achieve the same targets. However, some of his colleagues portrayed this more in terms of different sorts of local knowledge being transferred through the medium of the expatriates, as in this excerpt from an interview with another manager in which he uses this idea to differentiate the German managers from the British: Herr Frieden: I think we are a very dynamic company, and I think especially this comes from the fact that we are a local company, with networking between the organisations, even between plants. And that is something where, if you want to focus on the differences, I thought was very different to the Rover [system]. Expatriate managers thus described a knowledge-based Goffmanian strategy to maintain their position as the dominant cultural group in the organisation. This involved obtaining ‘international experience’ but forming ‘local alliances’ (as per Wang et al., 2009), making oneself indispensable to local managers through control of the knowledge of how to become ‘international’, but also exploiting divisions along class identity lines to gain knowledge from the workers which they can then use to maintain their own position. This strategy, as predicted in the theoretical section, involved complex negotiations between groups, and struggles over who has the right to impose and define identity within the organisation, rather than a simple international clash of cultures. For the German managers, knowledge management is thus a key part of strategic selfpresentation, and particularly of maintaining their position as dominant group in the organisation.

5. English patience: the situation of the local managers The local managers, in interviews, portrayed themselves as embattled champions of local ways, dealing with a globalising invader, again adopting a Goffmanian strategy of self-presentation using the most positive identity they saw as available to them. However, their expressed attitude towards the Germans was more ambivalent. The managers were aware that the Germans had the knowledge not only to save the company, but also to transform it into part of a globally prestigious manufacturing group, increasing their own prestige. Their identity, it is also worth noting, is a new one, resulting from the takeover; prior to the arrival of the Germans, their ethnicity was much less of an issue in selfidentification. Furthermore, although they see themselves as different to the Germans (and vice versa), the firm itself does not differentiate between ethnic categories of managers, meaning that their own self-identification as ‘‘English’’ is an informal reaction to this lack of differentiation, again indicating the connection between self-presentation and power relations drawn above. The English also often implied that they felt slighted at the implication that their own store of knowledge was not enough for them to achieve the company’s salvation on their own. This lead to tensions between the two ethnic groups, as one young male HR manager, ‘Kevin,’ noted: This site has a history, good and bad, and all the qualities seem to have been stripped away. My perception is of a company with little direction; we don’t agree on things, rules are imposed without discussion and people on the track up to the management are very unhappy. Furthermore, local managers expressed the idea that knowledge was being withheld from them by the expatriates, as a symbol expressing their strategic identification as an oppressed group:

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Kevin: There is change, but it seems like picking topics at random, it’s very inconsistent management. It does come from the Germans. . .. For instance, there was a management conference, the new MD’s first conference, they said there would be a change in management style, but couldn’t say what the change would be. The local managers thus deal with the negative emotional impact of the merger (see Sinkovics et al., 2011) by portraying the expatriates as lacking in knowledge and understanding of local systems, culture and history, engaging in reactive power relations relating to the possession of knowledge by imposing their own modifications upon the self-identification of the expatriates, as suggested by the theoretical discussion above. Kevin here expresses a sentiment which I heard repeatedly from local managers: We are used to the German style of management, so it isn’t an issue of nationality, but we know our German directors are only here for a few years; they are put into positions that are higher than this in Germany, and they don’t have to live with the consequences, because they move every few years. As well as the decision to transfer or withhold knowledge, so the interpretation of knowledge plays a role in the abovediscussed negotiation of power between groups in the organisation. The response of the local managers appeared to be a strategy of passivity towards the expatriates, doing, as noted by Kevin, ‘what [we]’re told.’ However, they made up for this by exercising greater control over the workers, which they did through organising the ownership of knowledge (cf. Sharpe, 2006). This was done through the concept of ‘process ownership,’ i.e., whereby the person who knows how to do a particular job is described as its ‘owner’, as Kevin describes: That workshop took place last week for a duration of four days, and at the beginning, at the start of the workshop there was no clear process, no clear owners, no clear definition of what needs to be done when it needed to be done but after three, four days of people’s skills with ourselves and the engineers we were able to put together a process, we were able to identify owners, even to identify why the process was falling apart before. The concept of ‘‘ownership’’ thus becomes a metaphor: knowledge is portrayed not only as something which can be owned and controlled, but which becomes a part of the ‘‘owner’’’s identity, to be used in Goffmanian fashion. The managers thus attempt to impose control over the workers by defining their identities in terms of ownership, or lack of ownership, of local and international knowledge, in an attempt to use the reinterpretation of knowledge against the Germans’ strategy of building knowledge-based alliances with the workers. There was also a downplaying of the workers’ importance to the organisation, in contrast (and probably in reaction) to the Germans’ prioritising of it. Another HR manager, ‘Tony,’ said that he did not know what was discussed in kaizen meetings, but imagined that it was ‘silly little things like shirt colours.’ This referred to a then-recent controversy in which the workers, who had previously been allowed relative freedom of dress, had been told instead to wear uniforms, colour-coded by shift, and had made it known that they perceived this as an unwelcome attempt to impose external control on them. The manager was thus at once playing down managerial attempts at worker control, belittling the workers’ (quite legitimate) concerns about the extent of managerial jurisdiction, and questioning the value of the kaizen process (in which the workers are expected to provide input on the functioning of the company). Self-presentation thus appears here as a form of knowledge management, as the manager tries to control the researcher’s perception of the workers’ identities in the interview. The local managers thus exercise control over the knowledge which workers have, and how they use it, to maintain their own positions within the organisation, and also to maintain their position in the wake of the expatriates’ activities. Finally, the local managers also retain control over the workers through the fact that most of the workforce are noncontract associates hired through a temporary labour agency. Many, therefore, are keen to obtain permanent contracts with the organisation, and the power to grant these lies to a certain extent with the local managers. However, the local managers also were aware that expatriates ultimately control this aspect of their power as well, as one PAM, ‘Tom,’ said: The issue it gives me is that contracts are in short supply; BMW has a strict percentage as to how many [workers] are contract and how many are [temporary labour] agency associates. Local managers thus express an identity as an embattled group in their interviews, which is connected to a lack of knowledge: they are kept in ignorance of important processes, such as the strategic direction of the company as a whole, by the expatriates, and yet they also lack the knowledge of manufacturing possessed by the workers. Again, it is worth noting that the self-presentation of the local managers is not only a reaction to, but contributing to, that of the expatriates (as it feeds into their own identities as ‘‘white knights’’), as the two groups work out the emotions incurred by the takeover process (see Sinkovics et al., 2011), and also, as discussed below, that of the workers. Their strategy thus involves attempts to maintain as much control, through allocation of knowledge and distribution of contracts, over the workforce as possible. Knowledge is thus, as discussed by the writers named in the theoretical session, again seen as a key symbolic currency in the negotiation of culture in the organisation. 6. Closed boundaries: the situation on the shopfloor Finally, the workers distanced themselves from both groups of office managers through their own use of knowledge as a tool for strategic self-presentation, and of self-presentation as a means of negotiating their position in the organisation. The

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change in systems of knowledge, which were important to the identities of the managers as ‘saviours’ and ‘defenders’ respectively, seldom figured in the workers’ descriptions of themselves and the company, and the politics between the British and German managers also seldom figured. Despite Herr Braun and other Germans’ attempts to court the workforce and form a knowledge alliance against the local managers, from a worker perspective, all managers tended to be lumped together as part of a single category who were distant from the workers, in much the same way that the managers similarly imposed a monolithic identity upon the workers. The workers as well as the managers were engaged in knowledge and identity-based strategies along Goffmanian lines, allowing them an impact on the organisation seldom acknowledged in IB studies, including, as noted, most of the papers discussed in the theoretical section. All HR managers acknowledged that they had little communication with the workers themselves, except when there was a problem. Tom expressed concern that the workers had an insular attitude: I think it’s really necessary that we recognise the bigger picture within an area, or an industry. And I try and impress on the people that it isn’t just our area, that there is a bigger picture: that my area doesn’t operate if the area before it doesn’t. An exception to this attitude was the PAMs, with whom the workers had to deal on a daily basis, and so there was a need to keep on good terms with them: (Team Coordinator, ‘Paul,’ asked about communications with his PAM) I’ve got very good contact. He’s been my manager for six years. . . and he’s a good friend as well as my manager, we get on, he’s been here for thirty years, and I’m after him all the time, I’ve got a lot of respect for him. Any issues we have, obviously qualitywise, processwise, I’ll contact him straight away and let him know. He doesn’t need to know so much but obviously I want to keep good communication. Tellingly, the last line of Paul’s account suggests a recognition that the transfer of knowledge is less important here for what it is, and more as a means of negotiating power relations. The workers thus used the transfer of knowledge to keep in the good graces of the managers with whom they had to deal on a regular basis, and the withholding of it to exclude those whom they did not, in a clear use of an ‘intangible’ for both self-definition and to maintain a degree of power over the managers despite their subordinate position. There did seem to be an awareness that, as the German managers noted, the workers had privileged knowledge of the way the line worked: Mike (PAM): Prior to [the takeover] you never had that. You were one big team if you like, with. . . decision making always coming through, with the guys on the line never having any input, and now there’s more emphasis on teamwork. Kuldip (TC): [At kaizen meetings] we get guests like the technology manager, and one time we had the Paint Shop director come, and they asked a lot of questions, and got answers, it’s the best opportunity for them to discuss how to improve their area, to raise any concerns they have really. . . well, the best way to improve. The workers were thus aware that the knowledge which they had was regarded as valuable by management, and they employed it as a strategic means of obtaining concessions. This was also incorporated strategically into their identities, as people who understand the actual working of the processes which produce the cars, emphasising their importance to (and yet lack of formal status within) the organisation. Knowledge thus again forms part of a process of Goffmanian strategic selfpresentation through which different groups within the organisation negotiate for position. Knowledge management was also essential to the development of power structures among the workers. While there was no formal rank on the line below the level of team coordinator, the workers who had knowledge of the most number of processes commanded the greatest respect, and, in some cases, were permitted to substitute for the team coordinator when she or he was absent. This can also be seen as a case of workers defining themselves in the face of externally imposed definitions. Although the managers were not generally aware of these informal, self-imposed identities, these clearly affected what went on in the working teams, thus having an impact on the activities of management. The possession of knowledge also formed a means by which the workers negotiated an unofficial internal hierarchy, in the absence of formal status criteria, through using knowledge as social capital (cf. Presutti et al., 2007). The most knowledgeable workers were usually the ones assigned to train new recruits, who consequently formed a ‘mentorship’ relationship with their trainer. While a system had been instigated by the managers whereby certain workers in a team were placed in charge of processes like organising holiday cover or social activities, these formal designations of status were of less importance to workers as determinants of status. This supports the idea that identity is a contested domain, affected by discourses between other-imposed and self-defined identity (see Jenkins, 1996), and closely related to possession and transfer of knowledge, but also shows how knowledge and Goffmanian strategic self-presentation can be used in power and status negotiations at all levels of the organisation, not just the managerial. The kaizen process, similarly, was generally portrayed by PAMs as a means of developing solidarity and a store of communal knowledge within the teams, as these excerpts from an interview with Mike show: These meetings take place once a month, about an hour and a half a month, and that’s really when that particular team will sit down together and work within the team on quality issues, on practical issues and that’s when they work as a team.

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There were also indications in the same interview, however, that workers might make use of their ability to withhold information in such sessions as a form of resistance: We’ve still got a percentage of people within those teams that don’t give a good deal of input cause they don’t think it’s that beneficial. He went on to imply that these resistors were, in fact, often the greatest possessors of informal knowledge: You’ve got. . . people who’ve been in the plant fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty years. And they’ve seen these sort of initiatives come and go, so you’re trying to bring these people around. . . and I think that’s the biggest problem for us, the biggest stumbling block. Furthermore, when workers had a concern, they would generally not approach managers directly; they would, however, approach TCs, knowledgeable workers, or union representatives. The workers would thus use knowledge to gain status within their ranks as well as, to a certain extent, to hold the managers unofficially to account, and would also engage the other-imposed definitions of their collective identity with their own self-created versions. The workers thus may have had little formal power within the organisation. However, in terms of their identity construction, they had quite a sophisticated grasp of how to use knowledge management strategically to gain and consolidate power – even over their ostensible superiors – and an internal hierarchy that was at least partly based on the use of knowledge to generate social capital (see Presutti, Boari, & Fratocchi, 2007). This, firstly, indicates that workers as well as managers play a role in the negotiation of culture within organisations, and, secondly, provides another indication of how knowledge is actively and tacitly used as part of a process of strategic self-presentation to acquire, defend and undermine status within the organisation. 7. Discussion and analysis The above consideration of identity, strategy and the uses of knowledge among the groups identified within Cowley Works thus indicates that power relations in this organisation are quite complex and strongly affected by identity of various sorts, with office managers being at least partly in thrall to the workers’ greater knowledge of how the factory works, and the transfer of knowledge becoming a key form of social capital within relations between different groups. We shall now consider the relationship of the findings of the study to the aims defined above, its contribution to theoretical literature, and what is implied for future research. 8. Knowledge, power and identity: who rules in Cowley Works? In the first place, this study supports the first two aims of the paper, indicating that knowledge played a key role in selfpresentation and in the micropolitical negotiations between groups of managers and workers in the MNC. The deployment, possession and withholding of knowledge were used as aspects of the Goffmanian strategies of individuals to negotiate areas of power within the branch, while the negotiation of culture took place through the imposition of identities upon others, and efforts to, instead, promote one’s self-created identity as definitive, thus expanding on and adding complexity to the arguments of Goffman (1956), Jenkins (1996) and Moore (2006). Furthermore, as indicated in Fig. 1, there were strong mutual connections between knowledge, identity and micropolitics, which allow us to understand the complex workings of culture in the organisation and the role which knowledge plays in its negotiation. Power relations between workers, local managers and expatriate managers, played out through strategic expressions of identity, affected knowledge management at Cowley Works, as the different groups deployed and withheld information, and prioritised different areas of knowledge above others. This had a consequent impact on the functioning of the organisation generally, as the transfer and withholding of knowledge, and the power relations which surrounded this, clearly affected the firm’s performance (e.g. the mixed success of Herr Braun’s knowledge alliance, and the demoralisation of

Fig. 1. A graphic representation of the relationship between knowledge, identity and power.

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the local managers regarding the devaluation of their knowledge). The strategic use of knowledge management and the negotiation of identity thus impacted on relations between groups, thus affected the integration of the branch into the wider MNC and consequently the MNC’s overall performance. However, this study also indicates that examining the use of knowledge management can provide a way into investigating the complexity of culture in organisations. For one thing, where most studies of knowledge management only consider the managerial level of the organisation, this study suggests that, on an informal level, the workers can potentially wield a certain amount of power, and that the managers variously attempt strategies to get them on their side or to divide them and prevent them from increasing their power within the organisation. Furthermore, identity and knowledge were strongly associated with each other, and, as per Sinkovics et al. (2011), both could be affected by emotion, as can be seen through the relationships between the British and German managers. When seen from the perspective of knowledge management and the strategic expression of identity, groups which are powerless from other perspectives gain a degree of control, indicating that what may seem like inexplicable workings of culture are understandable when seen in the context of identity, personal strategy, and knowledge. However, the relationship between knowledge and power within the organisation is also shown to be to be far from straightforward, confirming the literature on the subject discussed above (e.g. Duanmui & Fai, 2007; Ferner, 2000; Ferner & Quintanilla, 1998; Hong, Snell, & Easterby-Smith, 2009; Sharpe, 2006; Sinkovics et al., 2011). For instance, the fact that the local managers’ knowledge of the plant’s history and local culture is not currently privileged is a result, not a cause, of power relations within the organisation; also, that particular type of knowledge does influence status among the workers, indicating that different sorts of knowledge are given different values at different levels of the organisation. Moreover, although the workers possessed considerable power through their knowledge of the processes in the factory, they were unable, for the most part, to organise in such a way as to turn this into official power; while the union were active in protecting members’ interests, workers were not treated with particular respect otherwise, with the non-contract workers having the constant potential threat of being laid off, and, at the time of my fieldwork, no official resources were being put into the training of new workers (while this has since been changed, there is no way of ensuring that such practices continue). The withholding of knowledge, also, as used by the local managers, is seldom considered in most papers on knowledge management. The study also supports Giroud and Scott-Kennel (2009), Wiig and Kolstat (2010), and Wang et al. (2009)’s several arguments that connections to external, host-country institutions needs to be taken into account in understanding and improving the culture of an organisation, as well as providing ways of including the input of these hostcountry institutions in a qualitative analysis, through considering these institutions’ influence on the identities of the managers and workers. Issues of power and personal strategy in organisations are thus revealed to be complex practices, which, as argued in the theoretical discussion above, are both affected by, and affect, knowledge management. This brings us to the situation of the workers. While the activities of factory workers are the perennial subject of Industrial Relations, they very seldom feature in International Business papers (with exceptions such as Lambert & Haley-Lock, 2004). Furthermore, much of the literature on the strategic activities of workers focuses on issues of class relations in the context of Marxist theory, rather than taking more organic, dynamic views of social stratification (see Moore, 2007). This gap is significant since, as Guarnizo and Smith (1998) noted in their introduction to Transnationalism from Below, workers are every bit as engaged with global business as their ostensible superiors. Furthermore, the strategies of the workforce have an impact on the activities of the management, such that the German managers were openly courting their support and the local managers attempting to exclude them further, giving the workers a complex situation in which they were powerful with one group of managers but forced out by the other. This study thus suggests that research in international business might benefit from greater attention not just to managers, but to how managers relate to other groups within, or outside of, the organisation. Finally, as regards the third aim of the paper, a fluid, identity-based framework has the distinct advantage over a rigid, ‘culture’-based perspective of producing a more complex picture of the internal negotiations which go on in organisations and their connections with outside institutions (see Wiig & Kolstat, 2010). For instance, the animosity and difficulties encountered in combining the British and German cultures is not predicted in Yamin and Golesorkhi’s (2010) model, which would indicate that the two would have little difficulty in integrating. These also reflect the actors’ own categories as much as those externally imposed by IB studies (see Chapman, 1997). Although all managers strongly denied that national or ethnic identities had anything to do with their situation, and asserted that similar areas of conflict and consensus could have occurred in any takeover situation regardless of the cultures involved, ethnic identity did affect the situation in complex ways. The Germans’ focus on going ‘on the line,’ for instance, related to the German tradition of promotion through the ranks and ‘hands on’ factory management (Lawrence, 1980, pp. 63–64), and the British reluctance to do so reflected the years of industrial conflict during the Thatcherite period (see Ferner, 1989), and both decisions affected the attitude of the workers towards them. Similarly, the embattled attitude of the local managers, versus the alliance-seeking of the expatriates, may be informed by the fact that management and industrial relations in Germany are focused on consensus, while the British management style is more conflict-based (Scarbrough & Terry, 1998), again with consequences for branch/head-office relations. The high level of diversity among the workers also meant a perpetual search for means of organising strategically in a diverse environment: hence, perhaps, their focus on internal knowledgebased hierarchies and skills-focused social organisation, and also their collective bemusement with the managers’ ethnic divisions. Organisations are thus best understood not in terms of static cultures, but in terms of more dynamic, complex social forces.

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The Cowley Works study has thus contributed to international business studies through exploring the role of knowledge management in complex intergroup negotiations through the strategic expression of identity by the members of a multinational corporation, providing insights into how intangibles actually affect organisations and on how to understand the complexities of social relations in MNCs. We shall now consider the implications and limitations of this study. 8.1. Implications of the study and directions for further research The implications of this study for researchers are thus, first, that more complex models of culture, strategy and knowledge management within organisations are needed. The BMW case supports the increasingly held view that ‘culture’ in organisations is not straightforward, but is fragmented and consisting of overlapping subgroups, with connections to groups and discourses outside of the workplace, who form alliances and oppositions according to diverse strategies (Sackmann & Phillips, 2004), and that, as researchers have argued, various types of intangibles impact upon strategy within organisations (among others, Elbanna & Child, 2007; Lovett et al., 2009; Mense-Petermann, 2006; Meyerson & Martin, 1987). It also builds on Presutti et al. (2007)’s work to argue that knowledge management has a key role as a form of social capital through which intergroup relations are negotiated, and that the expression of identity has an impact on the functioning of organisations. This project thus indicates how an understanding of knowledge management within an organisation can provide insights into the often-difficult-to-understand complexities of its culture. The limitations of the research primarily lie in the area of generalisability and reflexivity. As Sackmann and Phillips (2004) note, qualitative studies, although their reliability and validity can be ensured (Lee, 1997) are difficult to generalise from; however, as Chapman (1997) indicates, this enables them to provide a degree of richness, detail and realism which quantitative studies cannot. Furthermore, while it may preclude generalisation, it does not preclude comparison, which can be equally useful as regards the research endeavour. This study is thus to be taken as ‘‘exemplary’’ rather than ‘‘typical,’’ with the understanding that further research will indicate how widespread the behaviour discussed may be. Secondly, the fact that this is a study done by a single researcher raises the issues of observer effect and the degree to which the researcher subconsciously imposes their own categories on the study; however, as my results have been triangulated with other studies of the same organisation (e.g. Porter, 2007), the effect can be compensated for. Further research is thus indicated in a number of areas. This study supports Ferner’s belief that qualitative research is particularly useful in terms of looking at some of the more complex aspects of business, in this case, the role of knowledge management in negotiating culture, suggesting that it might be worth revisiting some quantitative studies in these areas from a different perspective. However, there is the question (as raised by Sackmann & Phillips, 2004 regarding all qualitative studies) of how generalisable this material is, although studies of similar issues in different organisations (e.g. Moore, 2006; Sharpe, 2006) do suggest that it may point to general patterns of behaviour. Finally, it might be worth considering what international business can learn from studies of industrial relations, and of the role of workers in MNCs. My conclusions from this case study of German managers, British managers and shopfloor managers and workers at Cowley Works are thus threefold. Firstly, that knowledge management is key to understanding the complexities of culture in the organisation: the ability to communicate strategically, to withhold knowledge, and to understand formal and informal chains of power are all crucial aspects of the negotiation of culture. Secondly, that understanding ‘culture’ in the organisation is not simply a matter of considering its managers, but also its workers, and also of considering the impact of outside identities such as class and ethnicity. Thirdly, although my research backs up studies which suggest that national culture influences knowledge management (e.g. Buckley & Carter, 2002), it suggests that an identity-focused, flexible approach allows for better analysis of the complexity of organisations than a rigid, bounded approach to culture. 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Fiona Moore is Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is an industrial anthropologist who has done extensive work with Anglo-German business ventures in banking and the car industry, and is currently focusing on the uses of hybrid identity for knowledge transfer.