ABSTRACT
Moving away from scientific-technical knowledge in R&D, this chapter concerns the production process. The last decades have taught multinational companies not only to globalise knowledge in R&D, but also in the manufacturing process. In the large metalworking sector, such trends of gradual learning and upgrading are particularly evident. There, the subsidiaries of multinational companies can become integrated production sites'. The chapter presents the integrated production site' as a form of technological organisational and regional integration. The chapter looks at the objectified' effects of the internationalisation of production-related knowledge. Macro-level developments are opaque since there is little available information on the internationalisation of production-related knowledge. International labour regulation and labour relations can represent another stimulus for the internationalisation of knowledge and subsidiary upgrading. Multinational companies are shaped by power and the strategies of different parties, making them contested terrain' in which stakeholders enforce their interests and bargain over globalisation'.
