Inpatriation experience (i.e., working at headquarters) for host-country national (HCN) subsidiary managers is supposed to be beneficial for foreign subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer and financial performance. Applying upper echelons theory, we investigate whether HCN subsidiary CEOs with inpatriation experience promote knowledge transfer from multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters to their subsidiaries via the formation of social ties at MNC headquarters to drive subsidiary performance. Moreover, we theorize and investigate if HCN subsidiary CEOs’ motivational cultural intelligence can amplify the positive effect of inpatriation experience. Combining survey and archival data from 289 subsidiaries of MNCs in South Korea, our results partially support our theoretical model. Our findings offer important implications for expatriate staffing, inpatriation assignments, and subsidiary management.

东道国国家 (HCN) 子公司经理的回国经验（即在总部工作）被认为有利于外国子公司的知识转移和财务绩效。应用上层梯队理论，我们研究了具有回国经验的 HCN 子公司 CEO 是否通过在跨国公司总部形成社会关系来促进知识从跨国公司 (MNC) 总部向其子公司转移，从而推动子公司绩效。此外，我们对 HCN 子公司 CEO 的激励性文化智能是否可以放大回国经历的积极影响进行理论化和调查。结合韩国 289 家跨国公司子公司的调查和档案数据，我们的结果部分支持了我们的理论模型。我们的研究结果对外派人员配置具有重要意义，