Faced with the challenges to addressing the novelties of the changing business environments (e.g., new customer requirement, changes in customers taste and preferences, the introduction of new products or services by competitors), organizations seek to build collaboration among their employees who possess complementary knowledge. Integrating complementary knowledge enhances employees' ability to address environmental challenges and foster innovation. Despite the importance of knowledge integration for innovation, integration of such knowledge becomes difficult when employees lack a shared understanding of knowledge, and when the knowledge is newly generated. Because new knowledge is tacit in nature and highly personal to a particular individual, it is difficult to articulate, making knowledge integration (KI) an arduous task. Lack of shared understanding, the presence of new knowledge, and lack of common interests in employees creates three types of knowledge boundaries – syntactic (information processing) boundaries, semantic (interpretive) boundaries, and pragmatic (political) boundaries. The presence of knowledge boundaries makes it difficult for employees to share and access their knowledge with each other. To overcome the challenges related to the knowledge boundaries, employees use boundary-spanning objects, which are common lexicons, common meaning, and common interests, to share and access their knowledge across the boundaries. Although prior studies have …

The internationalization research domain has predominantly focused on country level antecedents of firm level decisions, with particular emphasis on why certain countries are selected over others for foreign direct investment (FDI). This approach may oversimplify what actually occurs from both practical and research perspectives. Recently, MNE strategic orientation and conduct, as an outflow of a region-based localization perspective (i.e.,semiglobalization), has gained increased scholarly attention. The tradition of considering country level institutional environments may be more robustly informed by extending a paradigm which considers region-based institutions, in addition to country. Thus, in this study I examine institutional effects, as underpinned by institutional theory, on one segment of FDI decision making, cross-border acquisitions behavior, in an understudied context, Latin American MNEs (i.e., Multilatinas). Linear and mixed regression are used to test hypotheses, by examining a sample of all Multilatina CBAs exacted over a five year period (2007-2011)in targeting host country firms within eight geographic regions. Multilevel study results provide overarching support for hypotheses, that a Multilatina's internationalization into a country and region through cross-border acquisition equity participation is influenced by both country and region institutional environments. Contributions are made to the semiglobalization, cross-border acquisitions, institutions, and Multilatina literature streams through development of …