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No more published? ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Issued by the Attorney General of Barbados.

This is a study of subsidiary entrepreneurship. In recent years entrepreneurship has been promoted by academics, practitioners and governmental agencies as a panacea for subsidiary managers as they attempt to sustain and grow their subsidiaries. The research question that underpins this works relates to the transposition of the concept of entrepreneurship into large nature business units of multinational corporations (MNC). Drawing on four case studies of subsidiary managers who invoke the discourse of entrepreneurship to make sense of their managerial behaviour, this study examines the difference between entrepreneurship and subsidiary entrepreneurship. There are two key findings. Firstly subsidiary entrepreneurship is markedly different from entrepreneurship, as it is classically understood. It is broader, more complex and encompasses activities such as outsourcing, intra-organisational competition and power politics. Furthermore it draws on the discourse of innovation and change management in large organisations. The second key finding is that subsidiary entrepreneurship is a meaningful concept for subsidiary managers, the academics that research them and the governmental agencies that support them. It pithily identifies and describes the practice of a proactive form of management in subsidiaries. In doing so it has become a compelling tool for managers and governmental agencies as they seek to sustain and develop subsidiaries.

ABSTRACT: This study examines the factors contributing to developing subsidiary knowledge in Malaysian foreign subsidiaries. Prior research on subsidiaries in multinational corporations has either concentrated on transferring knowledge from headquarters to subsidiaries or vice versa, ignoring the factors associated with subsidiary knowledge development through embedded relationship factors. Although embedded relations are essential for developing knowledge, the direction is most important for developing subsidiary knowledge. The significance of subsidiary knowledge development, subsidiary autonomy, and external and internal embeddedness has been poorly illuminated by prior research. This is because the perception of knowledge development is emphasized from the headquarters' perspective, while the subsidiary functions as a passive recipient. Using the resource-based and network theories, we argue that subsidiary development depends on the subsidiary's autonomy practice and the level of engagement or network relations between external and internal network partners. Our research shows that subsidiary autonomy and external embeddedness are the most significant predictors of subsidiary knowledge development. Internal embeddedness in subsidiary knowledge development is inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions for subsidiary autonomy and external embeddedness. In regression analysis, the survey results of 170 foreign-owned subsidiaries in Malaysia validate our hypotheses. According to the results of this study, subsidiary autonomy and external and internal embeddedness are the most significant predictors of subsidiary knowledge development. This study's findings have implications for subsidiary administrators in developing nations and multinational corporations. While subsidiaries are developing their knowledge, multinationals need to consider how much autonomy to offer them in this process. When subsidiaries are able to make independent decisions, embedded relationships will increase, and knowledge will be more likely to develop. This specific knowledge eventually contributes to the knowledge base of the MNE.

Title varies slightly. ; Title from cover. ; Mode of access: Internet.

This paper emphasizes the socialand political dimensions of subsidiary influence in strate-gically repositioning the subsidiary's mandate. The spe-cific skills subsidiary actors deploy in attempting toinfluence corporate headquarters have largely beenneglected in existing literature. Drawing from a micro-political perspective, we provide a more nuanced, fine-grained understanding of subsidiary influence by illumi-nating how influence is augmented and enriched throughthe concomitant effects of subsidiary actors' social andpolitical skills. Using a multiple case study analysis anddrawing on qualitative interviews, we illustrate how sub-sidiary actors' social skills are used to continuously create,maintain, and develop spaces of social engagement withcorporate decision makers, whereas political skill involvesthe ability to leverage social spaces by developing specificinfluence tactics such as targeting, showcasing, andframing.

We study subsidiaries of a MNC and research why they implement initiatives that deviate from organizational values of headquarters. Initially we relied only on the concept of institutional duality and expected that pressures in the institutional environment and values of headquarters explain the agency of the subsidiaries. But the results of our extensive participatory observation showed that the organizational values of subsidiaries (rather than those of headquarters) helped explain the subsidiaries' actions. In conclusion, we find that there are limits to the predictive power of the concept of institutional duality. Our study shows that a distinction between values of headquarters and values of subsidiaries is necessary in order to understand the agency of subsidiaries. We suggest a concept of 'institutional trinity' that distinguishes between these two values as well as pressures in the institutional environment. Our research demonstrates that an MNC can benefit from a subsidiary that develops its own organizational values. If headquarters is subsequently ready to adopt some of these subsidiary values, it may be able to adapt more easily to a changing institutional environment. ; ISSN:0938-8249 ; ISSN:0025-181X ; ISSN:1861-8901

Parent-subsidiary relationships are commonplace nowadays, yet surprisingly there is a paucity of research analysing their dynamics over time. This paper presents a (longitudinal) case study, illuminating the dynamics implicated when a UK chemicals company imposed its systems and rules on a new subsidiary. Drawing on observations from a longitudinal case study (from 1993 to 2001), the study considers: (1) the extent to which a parent imposes its (management accounting) systems, rules and procedures on a subsidiary; (2) the role which (local) political, cultural and institutional factors in a subsidiary play in shaping the dynamics of such change implementation; (3) how new systems and practices become accepted and take root as values and beliefs and how they supplement earlier norms? The study provides insight for the questions above, and draws on institutional theories and a power mobilisation framework to assist in the interpretation of observations. We find that the operations of the subsidiary company are influenced by inter-related forces, both inside and outside the organisation encompassing issues of power, politics and culture. As such, existing institutions in a subsidiary organisation are influenced, sustained, and changed by the socio-economic context in which the subsidiary is located. Organisational practices designed to secure external legitimacy are not however always symbolic and decoupled from internal operations. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.