This book is one of the first to specifically address the subsidiary development process - a phenomenon by which multinational company subsidiaries enhance their resources and capabilities. It shows how this process is integral to multinational corporate evolution, which is largely driven by changes in subsidiaries and their development. It also illustrates how the recent trend towards greater international dispersal of value-adding activities has impacted on this process and on multinational evolution as a whole.
In the field of international business, it is increasingly recognized that Multinational Corporations (MNCs) can no longer rely on headquarters as the single source of competitive advantage. Therefore, growing interest centers on decentralized entrepreneurial initiatives that originate in their network of foreign subsidiaries. Based on an extensive review of literature, Lars R. Dzedek develops a comprehensive framework to help explain how the setting in which a foreign subsidiary operates impacts its entrepreneurial initiatives and outcomes. The author conducts an empirical investigation in 14 foreign units of two large MNCs and offers detailed case studies with rich insights into entrepreneurial subsidiary activities.
Formation of company citizenship leads to success for the multinational companies by creating psychological alignments of the employee. This, therefore, should be considered as the international strategy of a multinational firm to create unique resources for competitive success. Successful multinational firms develop a common pattern of business performance by creating company citizenships, which include a primary focus on such values as organizational innovation, and a goal orientation. These values ultimately create commitment of the employees. This book proposes that there are some specific espoused values in every important multinational company, which form their organizational cultures and create values, which in turn may create enhanced performance of the organization. We can call this interrelationship between culture and performance as the company citizenship. This company citizenship can be transmitted from one part of the globe to another through the transmission of its corporate management and operations management system as a strategy of a multinational company.
In the global business environment, new organizational forms come and go but in today's multinational corporations the headquarters-subsidiary link remains the primary channel by which the firm is managed. It facilitates strategy, control and coordination, and smoothes the progress of inter-unit product, personnel, factor and knowledge flows of every kind. Using data from CEOs of a large sample of Australian subsidiaries of foreign firms, this book brings new insights into the nature of this vital corporate relationship.
This monograph is based on an extensive dataset and a very well documented case study. Such a wealth of empirical material provides an ideal ground to test theories and enables the authors to elaborate interesting conceptualisations of some specific aspects of the broader network approach, particularly concerning the internationalisation of business networks. Anna Spadavecchia, Business History Combined with recent advances in network analysis [the book] can be instrumental in advancing our understanding, which will not only be useful for research scholars, but also provide practical guidance for managers. . . It is full of ideas which seem like deceptively simple black stones that in the hands of a skillful artisan can be turned into dazzling diamonds. Charles Dhanaraj, Journal of International Business Studies The work by Forsgren et al. offers a major contribution in terms of the analytical power of network relationships. By shifting to an exchange based perspective, they challenge the classical view of organizational power and control, but also the sources of organizational capabilities. They argue that the distinct capabilities and resources of the organization are developed through relationships and connections. Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen, Rebecca Piekkari, Joanna Scott-Kennel and Catherine Welch, Academy of Management Perspectives An interesting and insightful book. It questions a lot of traditional thinking about international firms and the way they operate. Throughout the book, the reader is invited to develop a different perspective. This perspective might be called a relationships and networks theory of the firm. While this may sound familiar, the book goes well beyond anything I have seen in the existing literature, in terms of conceptualizing relationships and networks and in using this perspective to guide and interpret case study and survey research results. William G. Egelhoff, Fordham University, US It is now well accepted in the academic literature that the multinational corporation can be usefully modelled as a network of relationships. But it is less well-known that the origins of this perspective can be traced back to work done in Uppsala, Sweden, in the 1970s and 1980s. The term business network was first used there, and many important ideas around power and influence have also emerged from this research centre. In this new book, three of the key members of the Uppsala school develop a synthesis of the more recent ideas to come out of their research on networks. By focusing on the concept of the embedded multinational they show how the internal networks of the multinational interact with the web of external networks each subsidiary unit has in its local market. This book provides a definitive and compelling point of view of the importance of networking thinking to the study of the multinational corporation. It is an important book, and it will be widely cited in years to come. Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School, UK Forsgren, Holm, and Johanson have been among the leaders in developing the idea of the multinational firm as a network that spans different country environments. This perspective cautions the easy prescription that a multinational firm can do everything easily, if it just has the right organizational form. Relationships matter, as do the legitimacy of the firm in the context of its foreign investments. This book provides rich case insights into these dimensions. Bruce Kogut, INSEAD, France This book expands the business network view on managerial issues in multinational corporations. Specifically, it scrutinises the importance of a subsidiary s external and internal business network for its strategic and organizational role within the corporation. The internationalisation of firms in terms of management issues and headquarters control, the influence of subsidiaries on decisions and learning processes within multinational corporations are examined in detail. It is argued that
This volume assesses the situation for multinationals at the beginning of the 1990s, bringing together contributions from academics recognized as world leaders in the field and from practitioners with wide experience in international management. Drawing on perspectives from Europe, the USA and Japan, the contributors outline the shape of the global firm of the future. They focus squarely on the development of the corporation as a whole, rather than on the narrow management of individual foreign subsidiaries, and they also explore the specific implications for areas such as strategic planning systems, financial management, information systems and R & D management.
This book presents more than four decades of research in international business at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University. Gradually, this research has been recognized as 'The Uppsala School'. The work in Uppsala over the years reflects a broad palette of issues and approaches.
This comprehensive study examines the global strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs), the strategic evolution and the categories of their subsidiaries in China based on 150 MNCs. It is the first large-scale project of this nature to be conducted. The research has significant bearing on strategic planning for firms that have set up, are setting up or are planning to establish subsidiaries in China, and the firms that try to compete in the global marketplace. The findings are significant for the West, owing to the current economic crisis and the need to determine if subsidiary expansion strategies will help Western firms achieve the portfolio effects in operations and avoid the harmful impact of macro events such as the existing global financial crisis. Additional empirical findings, analysis, discussions, and suggestions for future studies are also presented. - Systemically reviews and summarizes the latest theories about MNCs' subsidiaries, analyzing the four main streams of research schools - Uses first-hand data from MNCs' subsidiaries of more than 20 industries from more than 10 countries including: USA, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union by way of two rounds of studies in 2001 and 2006 - Analyzes strategic evolvement models and evolution trends of subsidiaries of MNCs in China
Despite a shared interest in the analysis of complex organizations operating in complex environments, macro-organization theory and research on the multinational corporation have developed quite independently of each other. This book, the product of a collaborative endeavour by scholars from both fields, represents the first systematic effort to build a broad bridge between these two areas of research.
