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The Globalization of Knowledge-Based Services: Engineering Consulting in Spain, 1953–1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2015

Adoración Álvaro-Moya
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Abstract

This article explores the globalization of knowledge-based services and their impact on host-country firms’ organizational capabilities. Two drivers of such globalization—foreign aid and foreign direct investment coming from the United States—contributed to the development of engineering consulting in Spain in the beginning of the new global economy. The largest Spanish engineering firms have been able to integrate imported knowledge into their own organizational capabilities, enabling them to compete successfully in international markets. This imported knowledge was disseminated in two ways: through private companies, via affiliates and strategic alliances between locals and foreigners; and through the technical and military aid the U.S. government provided during the Cold War.

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Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 88 , Issue 4 , Winter 2014 , pp. 681 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2014 

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63 See the report on this issue, dated 10 July 1970, File 1051-QC-1 (13) 1.04 71/5226, AGA.

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96 Actualidad Económica, Ranking 5.000; and Tecnatom, Annual Report (Madrid, 2012), 47.

97 Doblón, 7 June 1975; Egurbide, “El ‘consulting’”; Molero, “Las empresas de ingeniería.”

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102 Puig and Torres, Banco Urquijo.

103 Ibid., 139–40.