The research within this paper identifies three main categories of cross-cultural communication challenges within international transfer of aircraft production. The first category is organizational structure, hierarchy and delegation of responsibility the second category is consensus behavior and avoidance of conflicts and the third category is individual motivation factors. Furthermore, the paper discusses the need for specific types of cross-cultural training that can be one solution for reducing the problems and difficulties that cultural challenges may induce. The case study indicates that it is important for Aeronautics, a Swedish enterprise, to apply organized cross-cultural training in combination with technical training. To secure the presence of cross-cultural training, suitable types of cultural training could be included in the working process/routine for how to conduct a production transfer.

This volume of the Research in Organizational Sciences is entitled "Received Wisdom, Kernels of Truth, and Boundary Conditions in Organizational Studies". Received wisdom is knowledge imparted to people by others and is based on authority and tenacity as sources of human knowledge. Authority refers to the acceptance of knowledge as truth because of the position and credibility of the knowledge source. Tenacity refers to the continued presentation of a particular bit of information by a source until this bit of information is accepted as true by receivers. The problem for organizational studies, however, is that this received wisdom often becomes unquestioned assumptions which guide interpretation of the world and decisions made about the world. Received wisdom, therefore, may lead to organizational practices which provide little or no benefit to the organization and, potentially, negative organizational effects, because this received wisdom is no longer valid. The 14 papers in this volume all, in some way, strive to question received wisdom and present alternatives which expand our understanding of organizational behavior in some way. The chapters in this volume each strive to present new ways of understanding organizational constructs, and in so doing reveal how received wisdom has often led to confirmation bias in organizational science. The knowledge that some perceived truths are actually the products of received wisdom and do not stand up to close scrutiny shakes up things within research areas previously thought settled allowing new perspectives on organizational science to emerge

The purpose of the paper is to discuss how relocation of production can be affected when MBD is applied. The research is performed from a view point of production relocation; the focus is not on MBD as a method. The paper is based on a literature review combined with empirical data from an industrial study at the Swedish enterprise Saab Aeronautics. It was hard to find gaps in the literature since no literature covering the aim of the research was found. Important subject of discussion was that update or creation of MBD production documentation can decrease the amount of tacit knowledge at the sender and help the possibility to differentiate off-line learning from on-line learning, which can save both time and cost.

The purpose of the study is to investigate factors that are important for the transition from 2D to 3D by Model Based Definition (MBD). Within MBD, 3D models are used as sources of information for design, production, distribution, technical documentation, services and the overall product lifecycle. The introduction and development of MBD at Aeronautics can be described in five transitions that illustrate how knowledge enhancement from project to project and between the projects and the linear organization has evolved. The largest challenges have been in the start-up of the transitions, people are gathered with different prerequisites, seeing solutions or problems from different perspectives.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how capability gaps can be identified and how they can be dealt with in aircraft technology transfers in future offset deals.

Methodology – The study is based on lessons learned as identified from three case studies of technology transfers from Saab, a Swedish aircraft manufacturing company to South Africa, the Czech Republic, and India.

Findings – The capability gap between sender and receiver has to be dealt with on two levels: on an organizational level; and on an individual level. It is proposed that the disseminative capacity constitutes the ability to assess the capability gap between the sender and receiver, and to convert this assessment to adaptations of the product and production process to include in an industrialization process. On the individual level, the capability-raising activities were connected to employees’ knowledge, Personal Development Plans for the transfer of explicit knowledge, as well as on-the-job training to facilitate the exchange of tacit knowledge.

Research limitations –The research is based on case studies from one company.

Originality/value – The paper focuses on the context of offset and reports on actual experiences from a capability perspective of technology transfers within the aircraft manufacturing area. It proposes a structured way of identifying and bridging the capability gap within such transfers.