onal functioning. Thus, it has been argued that managerial expertise can be a source of strategic value through effective teamwork (e.g. Hambrick 1987), in so far as managers with superior skills can generate rents (e.g. Castanias and Helfat 1991), and given the experiential aspect of international networking and expatriate assignments (e.g. Roth 1995).Others have attempted to demonstrate how managerial and professional competencies support organizational strategies (e.g. Boam and Sparrow 1992; Sparrow 1994). While there seems to be some evidence that MTD can positively affect organizational performance, especially when linked with strategy (Winterton and Winterton 1997), the difficulty of establishing such a linkage has led some to accept the value of MTD as an act of faith. In international management, the MTD agenda has to go beyond skill formation and competence creation to embrace the diffusion and transmission of knowledge across borders and cultures. The uni-dimensional view about the functional value of MTD is ripe for critical analysis. Lees' (1992) theoretical analysis of why much of MTD exists, even though there is little evidence of improvements in corporate performance, is a useful starting point. This paper goes further, to explore managers' explicit and apparent interests in MTD in an organization that is well-known for developing internation al expertise.The Transmission of CultureThe concept of culture is now a familiar theme and will not be discussed here (see e.g. Deal and Kennedy 1982; Hofstede 1980; Schein 1985; Trice and Beyer 1993; Turner 1989). Instead, we focus attention on the transmission of culture, a less understood issue. An understanding of the processes of culture transmission is important because the acceptance or absorption of culture by organizational members tells us something about the members' commitment to the organizational objectives. This can be illustrated in Scott's (1987) argument that 'stron...
