towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

what are the consequences of initiative taking in multinational subsidiaries the phenomenon of subsidiary initiative has received increasing attention in recent years but the consequences of initiatives and the associated dynamics of headquarters subsidiary relationships have received much less research attention building on resource dependence theory and self determination theory we argue that two basic goals subsidiary managers pursue are to achieve autonomy vis a vis corporate headquarters and influence over other units we investigate how a subsidiary s past initiatives contribute to its bargaining power and how headquarters response through granting attention or monitoring affects the realization of the subsidiary s goals using structural equation modeling our hypotheses are tested by drawing on a sample of 257 subsidiaries located in three different countries australia canada and the united kingdom our results show that subsidiaries are not able to increase their influence through initiatives unless they get headquarters attention we also find that subsidiary initiatives have a direct effect on subsidiary autonomy but the caveat is that initiatives also evoke headquarters monitoring which in turn decreases the subsidiary s autonomy in addition to providing insights into how subsidiaries can achieve their goals the paper also sheds light on the critical role headquarters plays in leveraging initiatives and the influence of individual subsidiaries in the multinational enterprise

reading the wind how middle managers assess the context for selling issues to top managers issue selling is an important mechanism for creating change initiatives in organizations this paper presents two studies that examine what middle managers think about as they decide whether or not to sell strategic issues to top management in study 1 middle managers identify themes that indicate a favorable or unfavorable context for issue selling top management s willingness to listen and a supportive culture were the most often named contributors to context favorability while fear of negative consequences downsizing conditions and uncertainty were thought to signal that a context was unfavorable for issue selling study 2 identifies factors that middle managers associate with image risk in the context of issue selling violating norms for issue selling selling in a politically vulnerable way and having a distant relationship with top management were regarded as major contributors to a middle manager s level of image risk both studies enrich our understanding of the social psychological mechanisms that undergird the strategic change process 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the rise and fall of social problems a public arenas model this paper develops a model of the process through which social problems rise and fall treating public attention as a scarce resource the model emphasizes competition and selection in the media and other arenas of public discourse linkages among public arenas produce feedback that drives the growth of social problems growth is constrained by the finite carrying capacities of public arenas by competition and by the need for sustained drama the tension between the constraints and forces for growth produces successive waves of problem definitions as problems and those who promote them compete to enter and to remain on the public agenda suggestions for empirical tests of the model are specified

state dependent pricing and the dynamics of money and output standard macroeconomic models of price stickiness assume that each firm leaves its price unchanged for a fixed amount of time we present an alternative model in which the pricing decision depends on the state of the economy we find a method of aggregating individual price changes that allows a simple characterization of macroeconomic variables the model produces a positive money output correlation and an empirical phillips curve in addition the impact of monetary shocks depends crucially on the current level of output which points to a natural connection between state dependent microeconomics and state dependent macroeconomics i introduction there is a long tradition in macroeconomics of attributing the real effects of nominal demand shocks to nominal price stickiness in this view if there is no change in prices when nominal demand rises then quantities must bear the burden of adjustment hence nominal price rigidity provides the friction needed for nominal demand shocks to be transmitted to the real economy standard models of this transmission mechanism such as fischer 1977 and taylor 1980 are based on the assumption that each firm leaves its price unchanged for a fixed amount of time the main reason for considering such time dependent pricing rules is their analytic tractability constraining firms to adjust their prices at prespecified times both simplifies the derivation of equilibrium strategies and allows the use of powerful time series techniques to analyze aggregate dynamics the main disadvantage of the timedependent approach is that between price adjustments firms are not allowed to respond even to extreme changes of circumstance this makes it difficult to know whether the qualitative effects of money in these models are the result of nominal rigidities per se or of the exogenously imposed pattern of price changes an alternative approach to modeling price stickiness is to allow the price setting decision to depend on the actual state of the

environmental influences on mne subsidiary roles economic integration and the nordic countries we seek to examine the importance of environmental factors in determining mne subsidiary roles in particular we examine the environmental factors associated with deep integration schemes such as the eu such schemes require a convergence of economic structure due to the establishment of common regional institutions regulations and policies specifically we distinguish between the scope of activities performed by subsidiaries and the level of competence of those subsidiaries the empirical analysis is based on a large scale survey of foreign owned units in denmark finland and norway these nordic countries differ with regard to their eu membership status norway being the outsider while the others are members but are very similar to each other in most other respects our data show that subsidiaries in norway report significantly lower scores for both scope of activities and levels of competence the effects remain strong even when we are controlling for other potentially influential factors the findings indicate that being on the outside of the eu may indeed carry the price of becoming less attractive to mne activity

aggregation and optimization with state dependent pricing a comment a key argument in caplin and leahy 1997 states that the correlation between monetary shocks and output is falling in the variance of the money supply we demonstrate that this conclusion depends on solving for the correlation in the nonstationary state of the model in the stationary state that correlation is initially rising

autonomy and procedural justice a framework for evaluating subsidiary strategy using the well supported dimensions of autonomy and procedural justice a four quadrant model of subsidiary strategy is proposed and a four part typology hypothesized partner collaborator militant and vassal subsidiaries a clustering process is used to develop a four group taxonomy that corresponds with the induced model the four groups of subsidiaries are analysed across seven alternative strategic dimensions integration responsiveness coordination configuration market scope product scope and value added scope the external and internal validity of the framework is confirmed and its utility discussed in terms of subsidiary s movement from one strategy state to another

a role based ecology of technological change this article considers what factors determine whether an innovation becomes a foundation for future technological developments rather than a dea end the authors introduce the concept of the technological niche which includes a focal innovation the innovations on which the focal innovations builds the innovations that build upon the focal innovation and the technological ties among the innovations within the niche using patents and patent citations to measure characteristics of innovation niches within the semiconductor industry the authors show that the size of the niche and the status of the actors within the niche have a positive effect on the likelihood that subsequent innovations will build upon the focal innovation competitive intensity within the niche has a negative effect on this likelihood

social imaginary and dilemmas of policy practice the food safety arena in japan through the string of food safety scares that has rocked japanese society since the early 2000s conflicts between the traditional notion of socially acceptable risk and the idea of a science based risk analysis approach have surfaced in the food safety arena elites including government officials and those members of scientific communities who support the science based risk analysis approach have become responsible for communicating seemingly contradictory ideas such as food in japan is safe and there is no such thing as zero risk with food this communication logjam has resulted in confusion and created public distrust of both government and scientific experts against this backdrop this paper aims to examine the struggles and challenges faced by government officials in explaining and practicing policies that pertain to highly controversial food safety issues the primary data used for illuminating the discourses is the official minutes of governmental committees including the agriculture forestry and fisheries committee and the consumer commission

s s pricing in a dynamic equilibrium model with heterogeneous sectors we study the impact of two sided nominal shocks in a dynamic equilibrium macroeconomic model goods complementarity differs across sectors as do the costs of changing prices even when strategic complementarities are equal across the sectors the systematic differences in costs of price adjustment mean nominal shocks have a sizeable impact on aggregate output and prices we exploit certain fundamental properties of markov processes to obtain analytical expressions for the stationary distributions of aggregate output and prices for the case of two sectors

explicating political hazards and safeguards a transaction cost politics approach we apply the logical of comparative institutional analysis to the question of the governance of the relationship between private investors and the government we consider two strategies that investors may follow lobbying for the creation of a specialized political governance structure or the reliance on more general political mechanisms to influence policy in that sector on an ongoing basis we identify political hazards as crucial determinant of the choice of political governance and the transactional attributes that give rise to such hazards finally we highlight shift parameters in a nation s institutional environment that influence the choice between specialized and generalized political governance mechanisms

drift and adjustment in organizational rule compliance explaining the regulatory pendulum in financial markets this article integrates research on rule development compliance and organizational change to model rule development and compliance in organizations using causal loop modeling from system dynamics to articulate explicitly a few key underlying processes we focus on financial markets as a case area suggesting that recurring regulatory problems in financial markets in the united states over the past 60 years although differing in specifics are structurally similar at the heart of the model is the tension between production goals that focus on short term certain salient benefits and required adherence to production constraining rules that attempt to mitigate long term uncertain nonsalient risks it describes systemically how organizations attend to rules depending on the nature of the benefits of production compared with those of rule compliance the model captures the operative mechanisms responsible for the development of pressures for production and for rule compliance in organizations providing a structural explanation both for problem prone organizations characterized by erosion of standards and increased violations and for organizations following rules more reliably drawing on studies of institutional work we conclude by suggesting research on how agency through strategic and tactical choice potentially modifies structure in rule compliance

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

miners politics and institutional caryatids accounting for the transfer of hrm practices in the brazilian multinational enterprise this article contributes to the growing stream of research on power and micro politics in the mne it is situated in the critical realist epistemology it adopts burawoy s extended case study method together with a context sensitive and an actor centered mode of explanation the case is intriguing a mne from brazil expands into canada the united kingdom switzerland and norway and imposes a new pay and performance management system contrasting with existing host norms the article uses this to examine interrelated questions about the influence of an emerging economy parent business system and how this interacts with the well developed institutional regulation of the host countries hence we are forced into the interesting realm of multilevel analysis about mnes power relations and institutional change we argue that the transfer of hrm practices within mnes is best explained by a consideration of institutions organizational structures actors postures within and beyond the mne and their relational interplay specifically it requires an analysis of the macro political context home and host institutional influences subsidiaries size mode of establishment history value chain location and the host economies dependence on foreign investment on which actors identities and interests are formed and on which the ensuing micro political relations are played out

the demand for international regimes international regimes can be understood as results of rational behavior by the actors principally states that create them regimes are demanded in part because they facilitate the making of agreements by providing information and reducing transactions costs in world politics increased interdependence among issues greater issue density will lead to increased demand for regimes insofar as regimes succeed in providing high quality information through such processes as the construction of generally accepted norms or the development of transgovernmental relations they create demand for their own continuance even if the structural conditions such as hegemony under which they were first supplied change analysis of the demand for international regimes thus helps us to understand lags between structural change and regime change as well as to assess the significance of transgovernmental policy networks several assertions of structural theory seem problematic in light of this analysis hegemony may not be a necessary condition for stable international regimes past patterns of institutionalized cooperation may be able to compensate to some extent for increasing fragmentation of power

global strategy implementation at the business unit level operational capabilities and administrative mechanisms the study examines the impact of internationally strategy on organizational design and the influence of the organizational design on effectiveness at the business unit level the empirical findings are based on survey responses from eighty two business units competing in global industries the findings are supportive of the contingency notion which suggests that business unit effectiveness is a function of the fit between the international strategy and the organizational design

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

organizational susceptibility to institutional complexity critical events driving the adoption and implementation of the ethics and compliance officer position the institutional environment is complex this complexity is characterized by forces that ebb and flow in wavelike patterns as societal expectations evolve with attention coalescing around specific events and then dissipating some of these critical events are broad and affect many firms whereas others are narrow and affect individual firms in either case when they occur these events elevate organizational susceptibility to societal demands but encourage different kinds of behavior in response this study seeks to model this complexity in an area of growing interest for organization scholars business ethics in particular i examine how firms respond to shifting societal pressures for greater ethical behavior by adopting and implementing the ethics and compliance officer position from 1990 to 2008 results demonstrate that although firms decide when to adopt in response to broad fieldwide critical events it is narrower firm specific critical events that determine resource commitments in implementation

the evolution of intracorporate domains divisional charter losses in high technology multidivisional corporations modern corporations have become synonymous with the multidivisional form of organization variously interdependent divisions are chartered to look after one or more business areas in effect defining the turf of the division and its purpose within the corporation and collectively defining the corporate domain however once created these divisional charters should not be regarded as rigid they are susceptible to change particularly in fast paced environments such as in high technology industries divisional charters are liable to change as divisions add or subtract businesses to their charter responsibilities these charter changes are seen as an adaptive device for large multidivisional corporations in fast paced environments this paper presents a process model of how divisions change their domains in hypercompetitive contexts focusing on the specific question of how divisions lose all or portions of their business charters the paper is based on a larger inductive study of charter changes in

implementing global strategy characteristics of global subsidiary mandates implementing a global strategy requires coordinating subsidiary activities across country locations the assumption often made is that such coordination must be managed at headquarters however an alternate approach is decentralized centralized responsibilities in which different subsidiaries within the multinational are given worldwide mandates to manage specific products or products lines this study identifies subsidiary characteristics that are associated with receiving a global mandate by examining foreign subsidiaries located in france germany japan u k u s and canada

economic theory and the world of practice a celebration of the s s model it was the question of how best to balance the costs of ordering and of running out of stock against the costs of holding excess inventory that inspired kenneth arrow theodore harris and jacob marschak to introduce the s s model in 1951 in this celebratory article we show how this model not only answered important practical questions but also opened the door to a quite startling range of important and challenging follow up questions many of great practical importance and analytic depth the s s model has become one of the touchstone models of economics opening new vistas of applied economic theory to all who internalize its structure today it is universally applied to solve questions faced in inventory control the core model elements uncertainty and fixed costs of adjustment are ubiquitous which has resulted in its becoming the general purpose economic model of discrete adjustment the s s model has also become a profound source of inspiration for macroeconomists seeking to understand the role that discrete microeconomic adjustments play in macroeconomic fluctuations looking forward we foresee rapid growth in the use of s s modeling to aid households making complex and costly financial decisions such as when and how to terminate a mortgage in the projected era of household operations research new modeling challenges will arise due to enriched feedback from the world of practice

host country environment and subsidiary competence extending the diamond network model we extend the centers of excellence concept to address the diversity and multidimensionality of subsidiary competence using rugman and verbeke s diamond network model we hypothesize the contingencies influencing the links between host country environments and subsidiary competence configuration and provide evidence from more than 2000 subsidiaries in seven european countries our results provide new insights into how multinational enterprises can overcome unbalanced national diamonds by acquiring complementary capabilities across borders

is knowledge power knowledge flows subsidiary power and rent seeking within mncs in recent years as multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries have become more closely linked to international networks their knowledge intensity has risen and some of their r d has gained a more creative role simultaneously and often connectedly many subsidiaries have acquired considerable strategic independence in all aspects of their operations and therefore are able to exercise considerable intra firm bargaining power to influence the distribution of the firm s resources in this context we suggest that intra mnc knowledge flows are a key determinant of subsidiary bargaining power we argue that subsidiary managers can exploit such power to pursue their own ends such rent seeking behavior is implicit in much of the literature on managerialism but our analysis suggests that such behavior can now occur in headquarters subsidiary and subsidiary subsidiary relations thus subsidiary strategic independence designed to enhance the competitiveness of outputs market knowledge and inputs asset seeking and learning can be corroded when the pursuit of subsidiary objectives encourages rent seeking empirical analysis of a sample of high technology subsidiaries in the uk provides strong support for the theory we examine several avenues whereby the incentives of units within the mnc can be aligned

normative contestation in transitions in the making animal welfare concerns and system innovation in pig husbandry previous studies of system innovations mainly focused on historical cases that were driven by commercial motivations of pioneers and entrepreneurs this article investigates a system innovation in the making that is driven by normative concerns such as sustainability or animal welfare initially formulated by outsiders like special interest groups our central research question is how when and why is normative contestation of existing regimes effective in influencing the orientation of transitions in the making the conceptual framework enriches innovation studies and the multi level perspective with insights from social movement theory smt and political science smt is used to analyze the build up of normative pressure through framing resource mobilization and political opportunity structures from political science we use the notion of multiple streams in our analysis a problem regulatory market and technology stream the research design consists of a comparative case study of pig husbandry systems one case analyses the sub sector of pregnant sows where normative pressures after several decades led to the changes advocated by the contestants the second case concerns the sub sector of pig fattening where normative pressure was less successful the difference is partly explained by the normative pressure for pregnant sows being larger than for fattening pigs the other part of the explanation is that in the first case normative pressure aligned better with the three other streams regulatory market and technology to lead to the changes desired by the contestants 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

reputation and decision making under ambiguity a study of u s venture capital firms investments in the emerging clean energy sector this study examines the role of reputation on decision making under ambiguity drawing on social cognition and behavioral theories we propose that a firm s reputation exerts dual pressures on its decision making under ambiguity on the one hand a firm s reputation increases its aspirations for future performance and promotes its engagement in risky strategies to achieve them on the other hand preserving the already established reputation requires a firm to deliver consistent performance over time which promotes greater use of risk reduction strategies our analyses of the u s venture capital firms investments in the clean energy sector from 1990 to 2008 demonstrate that while reputable firms are more likely to invest in the emerging sector they also employ risk reduction strategies more extensively the sector s legitimation further influences these firms investment decisions both directly and through its interaction with firm reputation

balancing subsidiary influence in the federative mnc a business network view the contest for intra organisational power in the multinational corporation mnc has gradually become a prominent issue on the research agenda as long as 25 years ago hedlund 1980 investigated the strategic roles of subsidiaries in mncs and doz and prahalad 1981 raised the issue of how difficult it is for headquarters to remain in control of its subsidiaries and to influence their strategies over time since then several researchers have suggested that mncs can be considered to be dispersed structures of power in which the top management s authority does not necessarily result in hierarchical power being the ultimate control mechanism hedlund 1986 forsgren 1989 ghoshal and bartlett 1990 doz and prahalad 1993 ferner and edwards 1995 kristensen and zeitlin 2001 morgan and whitley 2003 birkinshaw and hood 1998 examined the evolution of capabilities at the subsidiary level and recognised that in most corporations there is an internal competition for charter that implies a process of change in subsidiary roles birkinshaw and hood 1998 782 case research has also indicated that changes in the charters of divisions or subsidiaries in mncs constitute a strong feature of horizontal or vertical competition in the corporate marketplace galunic and eisenhardt 1996 birkinshaw and fry 1998 the tension between the headquarters and overseas laboratories caused by the laboratories desire for autonomy and influence is an example of such a competition asaka wa 2001

leader openness nationality dissimilarity and voice in multinational management teams we argue that leader directed voice i e communicating critical suggestions for change to the leader is a relational phenomenon and that it is affected by an inherent feature of multinational teams members dis similarities in nationality we tested our hypotheses in a sample of middle managers who were working in multinational teams the results of this study show that leaders of multinational teams are more likely to profit from the local know how of employees from underrepresented nationalities when they are open to their ideas and when they have the same nationality the study also shows that the effects of being open to employees ideas and sharing the same nationality are mediated by affective commitment and psychological safety respectively we discuss how even though the current relational demography perspective with its dichotomous understanding of dis similarity is not suited to capture the dynamics of cultural differences it does set the stage for future studies to examine the cultural dynamics behind an individual s experience of being different from other team members in multinational teams we also discuss the practical implications of these findings for multinational companies

aggregation and optimization with state dependent pricing the literature on the aggregation of s s policies has ignored the impact of aggregate behavior on the individual s optimization problem in the case of pricing the feedback effects are clear not only do pricing strategies determine the evolution of the price level but the evolution of the price level also influences the optimal pricing strategies in this paper we provide a consistent treatment of aggregation and optimization we use this model to analyze three issues in the menu cost pricing literature the relationship between strategic complementarity and the real effects of money the relationship between the variance of the money supply and the correlation between money and output and the relationship between the cost of price adjustment and the size of price adjustment questions concerning the dynamics of aggregate variables such as prices employment investment and consumption represent the core of business cycle analysis one striking feature of these variables is the radical difference between properties of these aggregates and the nature of the individual behavior that underlies them the behavior of a firm s prices investment and employment and the behavior of an individual s consumption all involve frictional elements that lead to discrete adjustment at the microeconomic level heterogeneity among individuals however tends to smooth the behavior of the corresponding aggregates in recent years a large body of research has developed to examine the manner in which microeconomic frictions influence aggregate dynamics one of the centerpieces of this research has been the s s model developed by arrow harris and marschak 1951 the key element of this model is the state dependence of individual decisions agents act when a state variable crosses some critical threshold which balances the cost and benefits of adjustment the aggregate implications of this form of microeconomic behavior have been analyzed by blinder 1981 caplin 1985 and mosser 1991 in the context of inventory dynamics by caplin and spulber 1987 caballero and engel 1991 1993 and caplin and leahy 1991 in the context of prices and by bertola and caballero 1990 caballero 1993 and eberly 1994 in the context of con sumer durables one of the most limiting aspects of these models is that they focus exclusively on the impact that microeconomic inertia has on aggregate dynamics they 1we would like to thank michael harrison loannis karatzas john leahy sr andreu mas colell a co editor and four anonymous referees for helpful discussions and comments and the national science foundation and the sloan foundation for financial support

the determinants of mne subsidiaries political strategies evidence of institutional duality in this study we develop and test a model of the determinants of political strategies used by foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises mnes using recent theoretical advances in institutional theory that recognize that mne subsidiaries are confronted with pressures for isomorphism within the corporation internal legitimacy and within the host country external legitimacy we integrate international business and political strategy literatures to create a multilevel model of subsidiary host country and parent determinants of political strategy our hypotheses are tested using survey and archival data from western european subsidiaries of us mnes

selective attention and the initiation of the global knowledge sourcing process in multinational corporations multinational corporations mncs frequently use their foreign subsidiaries to identify new opportunities to access external knowledge this article builds on the attention based view to examine how selective attention the focus on certain issues or answers at the exclusion of others works in the global knowledge sourcing process in mncs the results reveal an intriguing paradox while mncs may establish foreign subsidiaries far from headquarters to identify diverse novel knowledge and overcome local search headquarters decision makers tend to favor opportunities that are market proven and simply confirm what the mnc already knows subsidiary managers pre selling and selling efforts however can play a pivotal role in overcoming that bias this study combines detailed qualitative data with access to a proprietary database on 137 external knowledge sourcing opportunities in one of the world s largest mncs in the telecommunications sector

toward a model of issue selling by subsidiary managers in multinational organizations in multinational organizations local market responsiveness is critical to the development of effective strategies this responsiveness is expected to occur in part as the result of upward influence from local subsidiary managers who represent the local culture and shift relevant priorities accordingly issue selling defined as directing top management s attention to particular issues and helping them understand such issues is one important way in which subsidiary managers pursue upward influence the purpose of this paper is to help multinational organizations better facilitate and exploit potentially valuable input from local subsidiary managers to do so we propose an acculturated view of issue selling more specifically we argue that subsidiary managers socialized by different national cultures vary 1 in the extent to which their intention to sell issues is influenced by various contextual cues and 2 in their choice of selling strategies these theoretical differences suggest that local subsidiary managers from different cultures will differ in the way they approach issue selling and in turn in the way they influence the strategy making process the discussion traces the implications of this line of reasoning for future research on the influence of local subsidiary managers and more generally for research on the cultural embeddedness of the strategy process

centralization in headquarters subsidiary relationships research to date on centralization in mncs has produced many inconsistent findings the present study attempts to add clarity to the situation by re testing many of the existing hypotheses with data from a recent study of centralization in 50 large us uk and european mncs it examines how the degree of centralization inherent in the headquarters foreign subsidiary relationship varies in response to a variety of company wide and subsidiary level conditions the influence of company wide conditions on centralization appears to be much clearer than the influence of subsidiary level conditions the study also identifies several new contingency patterns that appear to be at work in mncs today