local government structure and public expenditures the law of 1 n postulates a positive relationship betweenthe number of democratically electedrepresentative districts and governmentspending strong support for thisrelationship exists in legislatures in theunited states at both the state andnational level and across countries fewstudies have examined this relationship atthe local level despite the fact that localgovernments operate under constraintssimilar to those faced by representativelegislatures using a sample of georgiacounties we find the number of countycommissioners to be positively correlatedwith county government expenditures indicating support for the law of 1 nat the local level

control and performance of international joint ventures control is a critical concept for successful management and performance of international joint ventures ijvs this paper reviews and synthesizes prior studies addressing the conceptualization and operationalization of control within ijvs as well as the ijv control performance relationship the paper also presents a new conceptualization of ijv control as well as a conceptual frame work for studying control of ijvs

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

districting and government overspending theories of government spending driven by a common pool problem in the fiscal revenues pool predict that greater districting of a political jurisdiction raises the scale of government this paper presents evidence on this and related predictions from a cross section of city governments in the united states the main finding is that when other plausible determinants of government spending are controlled for greater districting leads to a considerably greater scale of government activity the results also show that at large electoral systems do not and forms of government that concentrate powers in the office of the executive do break this relationship

explaining the international intensity and global diversity of early stage technology based firms abstract early stage technology based firms are confronted with the complexity of foreign markets and global competition from their earliest stages of development not only must technology entrepreneurs keep pace with ever changing technology based product offerings but they must also simultaneously stay abreast of competitors and industry trends in multiple countries we surveyed 75 small technology based firms in ontario to evaluate their international activities and try to explain both the intensity of their foreign sales the percent of total sales coming from foreign sources as well as the global diversity of the markets in which they operate the number of major regional areas from which they derive revenue our findings suggest that resources necessary to pursue international sales have an important impact on both foreign market intensity and diversity in contrast however attitudes towards foreign markets helped to explain international intensity but not global diversity additionally firm age was positively associated with global diversity but not international intensity these findings support the notion of small technology firms being instant internationals but suggest that proceeding to the next step achieving global diversity requires significantly greater time and resources in line with prior empirical research these firms tended to increase their international intensity and diversity as they became larger in contrast with what the literature suggests however firms utilizing strategic alliances were no more active internationally than those not using strategic alliances finally government assistance helped to explain the international intensity of these firms but not the global diversity these results help managers researchers and shapers of public policy better understand the international activities of early stage technology firms given the relationship between attitudes and international intensity there appears to be some opportunity associated with trying to influence the attitudes of ceos regarding initial expansion into international markets for firms to become globally diverse however there is a greater dependency on the availability of resources as well as accumulated business experience managers should recognize the pattern this suggests and perhaps be leery of becoming too globally diverse too quickly overall the relationship between size and foreign activities suggests that growth opportunities are linked to international markets although some broad relationships are suggested regarding the need for collaboration and government support further research is necessary to understand the use of strategic alliances as well as government assistance in both international market intensity and global diversity

development of archetypes of international marketing strategy the extant business literature contains three separate characterizations of international marketing strategy standardization adaptation concentration dispersion and integration independence these characterizations have for decades informed researchers students and practitioners alike of the strategic options a multinational firm might have in formulating its cross border marketing approaches although useful these characterizations have yet to be unified within an integrative classification scheme that considers the gestalt combinatorial patterns along multiple strategy dimensions toward creating such a classification scheme this paper proposes a holistic conceptualization of international marketing strategy grounded in configurational theory whereby strategies are viewed as multidimensional archetypes we present evidence of three distinct international marketing strategy archetypes obtained through an exploratory case coding clustering study after discussing the characteristics possible drivers and contingent performance potentials of these archetypes we offer directions for future research

foreign locals a cautionary tale on the culture of mnc local employees multinational corporations mncs rely heavily on local employees when conducting their international operations yet the international business literature provides few instances of true focus on these employees the commonly used label host country nationals hcns confers them an identity strongly related to the culture of their country prompting both researchers and practitioners to know them through the knowledge about the local culture this paper provides evidence that a more sophisticated view of the culture of hcns is needed through an ethnographic exploration of hcns working in local subsidiaries of american mncs in romania i reveal that hcns are not always culturally interchangeable with the rest of the host country population hcns can display a variety of cultural profiles more or less reflective of the national culture depending on their enacted stance towards the native culture and the cultural landscape of the mncs themselves the findings call for further specification of theories relying on the assumed localness of hcns and should contribute to the ongoing conversation on the interplay between the cultures specific to the mnc and its host countries

supermajority voting requirements for tax increases evidence from the states abstract this paper measures the effect of state level supermajority requirements for tax increases on tax rates unobserved attitudes towards taxation tend to influence both the adoption of supermajority requirements and tax policy consequently one cannot distinguish between the effect of these requirements and their correlation with these unobserved attitudes a model is presented in which legislatures controlled by a pro tax party adopt a supermajority requirement to reduce the majority party agenda control the propensity of pro tax states to adopt supermajority requirements results in an underestimate of the true effect of these requirements on taxes to correct this identification problem the paper first uses fixed effects to control for unobserved attitudes and then employs instruments that measure the difficulty of amending state constitutions the paper concludes that supermajority requirements have significantly reduced taxes

creation adoption and diffusion of innovations by subsidiaries of multinational corporations this paper reports some of the findings of a multi phased and multi method study on the organizational attributes that facilitate creation adoption and diffusion of innovations by subsidiaries of multinational companies comparison of results obtained through case research in nine companies multiple respondent questionnaire surveys in three companies and a single respondent survey in 66 north american and european multinationals reveal unambiguous and positive impacts of normative integration through organizational socialization and dense intra and inter unit communication on an mnc subsidiary s ability to contribute to the different innovation tasks the findings are less consistent with regard to the effects of local resources and autonomy and it appears that the influences of these two attributes are strongly mediated by the levels of normative integration and organizational communication

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

multinational parent companies influence over human resource decisions of affiliates u s firms in mexico this study provides empirical evidence for the relationship between the degree of influence u s parent companies have over the human resource decisions of their mexican affiliates and the affiliates resource dependencies on the parent company both wholly owned and joint venture affiliates are examined resource dependence was the factor most closely related to parent influence over affiliate human resource decisions the importance of an affiliate to a parent company the nationality of affiliate managers and the type of ownership arrangements were also found to affect parent influence but to lesser extents than resource dependencies

supermajority rule and the law of 1 n this paper investigates the impact of a supermajority rule on the law of 1 n which posits that a larger number of districts increases the size of government our analysis suggests that supermajority rule despite the claim that it restrains excessive spending increases the 1 n effect because qualified majorities require logrolling to attract additional members using data from us states from 1970 to 2007 we find that the adoption of a supermajority rule has a robust worsening effect on the fiscal commons problem identified by the law of 1 n

bargaining in bicameral legislatures when and why does malapportionment matter malapportionment of seats in bicameral legislatures it is widely argued confers disproportionate benefits to overrepresented jurisdictions ample empirical research has documented that unequal representation produces unequal distribution of government expenditures in bicameral legislatures the theoretical foundations for this empirical pattern are weak it is commonly asserted that this stems from unequal voting power per se using a noncooperative bargaining game based on the closed rule infinite horizon model of baron and ferejohn 1989 we assess the conditions under which unequal representation in a bicameral legislature may lead to unequal division of public expenditures two sets of results are derived first when bills originate in the house and the senate considers the bill under a closed rule the equilibrium expected payoffs of all house members are surprisingly equal second we show that small state biases can emerge when 1 there are supermajority rules in the malapportioned chamber 2 the senate initiates bills which produces maldistributed proposal probabilities and 3 the distributive goods are lumpy we thank seminar participants at new york university the university of pennsylvania and the 2002 annual meeting of the american political science association for helpful comments james snyder and michael ting gratefully acknowledge the financial support of national science foundation grant ses 0079035 stephen ansolabehere gratefully acknowledges the support of the carnegie corporation under the carnegie scholars program this paper was written while michael ting was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill and he thanks the department of political science there for their support

mne institutional advantage how subunits shape transpose and evade host country institutions scholars increasingly emphasize the impact of institutions on multinational enterprises mnes but the opposite relationship has attracted less research that is mne agency in relation to institutions based on a comparative case study of six mnes from the united states and sweden this paper remedies this it explores and explicates mne subunits strategic responses to host country institutional constraints and opportunities in five different regions a new institutional approach is adopted which allows for an investigation of mne subunit agency in relation to normative and cognitive institutions as well as regulative ones this fine grained analysis reveals not only what kinds of responses mne subunits invoke but why and how they are able to respond we identify four strategic responses by which subunits shape transpose and evade institutions in the pursuit of competitive advantage innovation arbitrage circumvention and adaptation these responses are driven by three key enablers multinationality foreignness and institutional ambiguity that serve to enhance and heighten three mechanisms reflexivity role expectations and resources by linking the enablers and the mechanisms to specific types of strategic responses in a framework and typology the paper not only contributes to emerging research on the interplay between mnes institutions and strategy but to strategy practice

within country product diversification and foreign subsidiary performance we examine the product diversification of a multinational firm within each of its host country markets based on a sample of 12 992 foreign subsidiaries of japanese multinational firms we find that higher levels of within country product diversity led to higher subsidiary performance where the institutional strength of the local market was weak and where a firm s corporate product diversity level was high our study highlights the importance of examining a multinational firm s strategy in its individual host country markets as influenced by the institutional characteristics of a host country market and the corporate level strategy of the multinational firm

internal equity financing and the performance of multinational subsidiaries in emerging economies we examine the internal equity financing of the multinational subsidiary which retains and reinvests its own earnings internal equity financing is a type of firm specific advantage fsa along with other traditional fsas in innovation research and development brands and management skills it also reflects subsidiary level financial management decision making here we test the contributions of internal equity financing and subsidiary level financial management decision making to subsidiary performance using original survey data from british multinational subsidiaries in six emerging countries in the south east asia region our first finding is that internal equity financing acts as an fsa to improve subsidiary performance our second finding is that over 90 of financing sources including capital investment by the parent firms in the british subsidiaries come from internal funding our third finding is that subsidiary level financial management decision making has a statistically significant positive impact on subsidiary performance our findings advance the theoretical empirical and managerial analysis of subsidiary performance in emerging economies

subsidiary size and the level of subsidiary autonomy in multinational corporations a quadratic model investigation of australian subsidiaries we investigate the relationship between subsidiary size and subsidiary autonomy in multinational corporations mncs and conclude that a quadratic inverted u shaped model is the best fit to our data founding our arguments in resource dependence theory we propose that while the subsidiary is relatively small increasing subsidiary size will correlate with increasing resources in the subsidiary and a consequent increase in subsidiary autonomy this positive linear relationship persists until an inflection point is reached and subsidiary autonomy begins to decline we argue that this is due to increasing subsidiary size bringing increasing coordination complexity a need for greater inputs of managerial experience and expertise and growing interdependence between the subsidiary and the rest of the corporation employing a sample of 313 australian subsidiaries of mostly us uk european and japanese mncs we use a three step hierarchical regression to investigate controls only linear and quadratic effects of subsidiary size on subsidiary autonomy the quadratic inverted u model supports and extends hedlund s 1981 proposition a post hoc investigation suggested that there might be value in exploring a sinusoidal relationship between size and autonomy

supermajority rule the law of 1 n and government spending a synthesis i develop models in which a minimum winning coalition decides on the level of government spending where the coase theorem holds amongst members of the winning coalition an increase in the supermajority requirement has potentially conflicting effects on spending a higher requirement increases the tax price internalized by the minimum winning coalition but also increases the number of districts included in this coalition i develop separate models in which the spending in question consists of i a nonexcludable good ii a distributive consumption good iii infrastructure spending and iv a transfer payment a supermajority rule has no effect on spending for nonexcludable goods and ambiguous effects on spending for distributive projects and infrastructure spending an increased supermajority requirement does unambiguously reduce transfer spending i also relate the supermajority rule to the law of 1 n if the coase theorem holds and a minimum winning coalition forms an increase in the number of districts n has precisely the same effect on overall expenditure as a decrease in the supermajority requirement thus the ambiguous spending effects stemming from supermajority rule carry over into this version of the law of 1 n

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

the power of the proposal maker in a model of endogenous agenda formation in a distributive setting this study examines a voting procedure for which agenda formation is endogenous it is found not surprisingly that agenda formation is another avenue for strategic manipulation of the voting process and provides the member to first take the floor an asymmetric advantage what is surprising is the degree of this advantage we find that the initial proposal maker earns a share of the fixed resource exceeding 1 for an majority rule and this is regardless of the number of members the voting rule is found to be an effective instrument in at least partially offsetting the power of the proposal maker while maintaining the stability of the voting process

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

how to succeed at increasing spending without really trying the balanced budget amendment and the item veto congressional efforts at budgetary reform generally contain procedural impediments designed to limit profligate spending in particular the line item veto and the balanced budget amendment are intended to limit the ability of legislators to pursue their constituents interests through pork barrel politics at the expense of the broader public interest however assuming that legislators remain motivated by local constituent interests we argue that these reforms will promote unexpected results the supermajorities requires by the line item veto and the balanced budget amendment include incentives for log rolling that promote and may indeed increase pork barrel spending

corporate control of investments and management styles this article describes how corporate managers of major swedish groups in different industries exert control over investment requests and the direction of the investments of their groups the study

configurations of strategy and structure in subsidiaries of multinational corporations a three fold typology of subsidiary roles world mandate specialized contributor local implementer was induced from the literature and its empirical validity was confirmed adopting a configurational approach we then explored the ways in which subsidiary structural context varies across subsidiary role types structural context characteristics were determined through a discussion of the underlying principles of the hierarchy and heterarchy models of multinational organization the key findings were a higher strategic autonomy in world mandates than in local implementers b a more internationally configured value chain in world mandates and specialized contributors than local implementers c lower levels of internal product flows in world mandates than the other two types and d a significantly lower performance in specialized contributors implications for a configurational model of subsidiary management and for heterarchy as a higher level conceptualization are discussed

trust and performance in cross border marketing partnerships a behavioral approach existing research on international partnerships focuses primarily on the ex ante structuring of interorganizational relationships this study departs from this research by taking a behavioral approach to understand the ex post maintenance of cross border marketing partnerships a conceptual model is developed by identifying the antecedents of trust and performance in such partnerships the model is empirically tested on a sample of u s firms having distributor and licensing relationships with firms from asia europe and central south america findings support the importance of bilateral relational norms and informal monitoring mechanism in building interorganizational trust and improving market performance of international partnerships

the global integration of business functions a study of multinational businesses in integrated global industries the way that multinational businesses in integrated global industries coordinate and control r d manufacturing and marketing functions across borders has significant implications for performance we propose that in such global industries certain integrating modes will be more effective than others in integrating a function globally we show that each function has a different combination of effective integrating modes for global r d integration people based and information based modes are more effective than formalization based and centralization based modes for manufacturing people information and formalization are more effective than centralization with respect to marketing information and centralization are more effective than people and formalization we also demonstrate that the co alignment between actual and ideal profiles configurations or patterns of integrating modes results in superior performance our results reveal that people based and information based modes are generally more effective than formalization based and centralization based modes in coordinating and controlling business functions worldwide

the law of 1 n revisited distributive politics legislature size and the costs of collective action the foundational model of distributive politics predicts a positive relationship between the number of legislative districts and the level of inefficiency of projects approved by the legislature weingast shepsle and johnsen s law of 1 n this relationship has been tested extensively in the empirical literature with mixed results this article presents a model wherein passing the omnibus legislation typical of distributive politics is a costly process the model predicts a nonlinear relationship between legislature size and spending as increasing the size of the legislature also increases the costs of collective action results from an empirical exercise based on u s state legislatures 1962 2014 are consistent with the proposed model showing a 1 n effect which diminishes at the margin as the legislature s size increases especially in the lower chamber

an empirical analysis and extension of the bartlett and ghoshal typology of multinational companies this study offers an empirical test and extension of the bartlett and ghoshal typology of multinational companies mncs a three fold typology of multinational companies global multidomestic and transnational is developed from the literature this typology is tested using data from 166 subsidiaries of 37 mncs headquartered in 9 different countries subsidiaries in the three types of mncs are shown to differ significantly in aspects of interdependence and local responsiveness

organisational ecology in the danish restaurant sector abstract the article demonstrates the high rates of organisational turmoil in the restaurant sector the intensity of natural selection depends mainly on the age and size of the enterprise affiliation with other enterprises increases the chances of survival but only if there is a substantial number of units co operating in a group surprisingly the level of staff competence and managerial capacity measured in quantitative terms cannot explain the level of success or failure in the restaurant business to any significant degree organisational ecology which constitutes the theoretical and methodological base of this article is a promising research approach to tourism issues the article which focuses on explanations for the occurrence of life events in the restaurant sector calls for more careful policy considerations than are often the case in particular human resource and labour market related actions should be critically reassessed

do world product mandates really matter this paper examines whether mnc subsidiaries with world product mandates fared better than non specialized subsidiaries in the face of canada u s trade liberalization using confidential affiliate level panel data on 445 canadian subsidiaries of u s mncs empirical analysis finds that affiliates with higher levels of r d and human capital resources grew relatively more when trade was liberalized however r d and human capital intensive affiliates experienced systematically different growth patterns the findings imply that world product mandates do reduce affiliates vulnerability to downsizing and that human capital development and r d may be equally important in building world product mandates

the law of k n the effect of chamber size on government spending in bicameral legislatures recent work in political economics has examined the positive relationship between legislative size and spending which weingast et al 1981 formalized as the law of 1 n however empirical tests of this theory have produced a pattern of divergent findings the positive relationship between seats and spending appears to hold consistently for unicameral legislatures and for upper chambers in bicameral legislatures but not for lower chambers we bridge this gap between theory and empirics by extending weingast et al s model to account for bicameralism in the context of a baron ferejohn bargaining game our comparative statics predict and empirical data from u s state legislatures corroborate that the size of the upper chamber n is a positive predictor of expenditure whereas the ratio of lower to upper chamber seats k exhibits a negative effect we refer to these relationships as the law of k n as the two variables influence spending in opposite directions

autonomy delegation to foreign subsidiaries an enabling mechanism for emerging market multinationals current theory on foreign subsidiary autonomy is insufficient to examine a situation where a multinational lacks experience to organize global operations and yet intends to compete extensively with established multinational enterprises mnes from advanced economies by building on theoretical perspectives developed for emerging market multinational enterprises emnes we advance the idea that foreign subsidiary autonomy is a strategic mechanism to overcome the emne s weaknesses in managing globally dispersed businesses and their home country disadvantages after foreign entry subsidiary autonomy delegation assists in performing the learning functions necessary for overcoming resource and capability voids as well as for distancing the subsidiary administratively from the parent s negative home country institutional heritage analyses of survey data collected from headquarter senior executives of 240 chinese mnes suggest that subsidiary autonomy delegation is higher among firms relying on foreign markets as a springboard to acquire strategic assets whose top managers at the headquarters perceive high domestic institutional constraints and which do not count on government assistance to expand internationally further we demonstrate that these relationships are strengthened with greater inward foreign direct investment cooperative experience and with the use of merger and acquisition entry modes these findings have important implications for theories on subsidiary autonomy

the multinational corporation as a multilingual community language and organization in a global context this paper develops a framework for analyzing the multinational corporation mnc as a multilingual community in which parent functional language and subunit functional languages are concurrently used and recursively linked through an intra corporate communication network the unit breadth and intensity of an mnc s language system are designed to apply global strategies within the context of evolving environmental and organizational realities to the extent that language design is the product of deliberate choice we suggest that headquarters functional language is determined by the mnc s international strategy organizational structure and transnationality while subunit functional language is designed in accordance with organizational form strategic role and expatriate deployment aligning language systems with organizational strategy and dynamics improves mnc communication coordination and knowledge sharing

the causes of government expenditure growth a survey of the u s evidence abstract the growth of government budgets can be broken down into a institutional and institutional components the former component the familiar substitution income and population public goods tax sharing effects is estimated to contribute about two fifths of the growth of u s government spending the latter component rent seeking political redistributions bureaucracy and perceptual informational impedimentia is important too but an exact imputation cannot be asserted given the state of the art in empirical public choice theory the cross effects on spending of the growth of regulation and tax preferences or tax expenditures though interesting is not pursued

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

the transfer of organizational culture overseas an approach to control in the multinational corporation organizational control has traditionally been described within the framework of the ideal type of weberian bureaucracy in which rules and regulations specify desired behavior and rewards are based on explicit performance measures this paper describes an alternative organizational ideal type that relies on an organizational culture for control in this type of system behavior is specified by the organizational culture and performance is maintained via mechanisms of social pressure an example of this letter type of control is found in the type z organization an american organizational form similar in many ways to the japanese form particularly interesting is the way in which a type z organization manages overseas subsidiaries by establishing the organizational culture in the subsidiary the process by which this is accomplished and by which control is maintained are described in a comparative empirical study of the headquarters and subsidiary of a firm representative of each control type the implications of this approach for management of the multinational firm and for the host country are also discussed

international corporate governance a review and opportunities for future research we review four decades of research about the corporate governance of multinational corporations mncs which we label international corporate governance icg we identify and discuss three main streams of research that draw on different conceptualizations and theoretical lenses of corporate governance after synthesizing their respective findings we propose several avenues for future research that integrate these three streams of research with the goal of developing a more nuanced understanding of icg we hope this review article will inspire international business scholars to continue examining how corporate governance can be an effective tool for mnc success

presidential pork executive veto power and distributive politics mitigated to the extent that the president prefers spending in some districts over others the model also generates new insights and predictions about fiscal policy under the separation of powers including the effects of divided government electoral rules and term limitations for the executive

density dependence in the evolution of populations of newspaper organizations a model of density dependence is proposed to explain regularities in the growth and decline of organizational populations density the number of organizations is assumed to be a function of the social processes of legitimation and competition at low density the model predicts that the legitimation process will dominate and will lead to high organizational founding rates and low organizational mortality rates at high levels of density competition will dominate and consequently founding rates will decline and mortality rates will rise the model is tested with hazard function models using data from nine newspaper populations spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and covering over 5200 newspapers analysis offounding rates provides strong empirical support for the model analysis of mortality rates reveals that the model holds for large populations

national culture and expatriate deployment we hypothesize that expatriate deployment is a control function predicted by home country culture dimensions with transaction cost and agency repercussions rather than culture in the aggregate this departure from the traditional conceptualization and measurement of cultural impact also yields a hypothesized asymmetrical effect which is tested for a multi country sample of 236 multinational subsidiaries using multiple measures of national culture hypotheses are supported with assertiveness and power distance confirmed as prime predictors of expatriate deployment

control changes in multinational corporations adjusting control approaches in practice the issue of control in multinational corporations mncs is central to international business scholarship however prior literature tends to provide a static perspective offering few theoretical insights on control changes especially the practices that enable control adjustments adopting a practice theory perspective we consider control as in the making whereby adjustments emerge through a social accomplishment constituted and reconstituted as headquarters and subsidiaries engage in a co creating process using a longitudinal case study approach we had the rare opportunity to track and compare an unsuccessful and a successful attempt to adjust control in an mnc over time our main theoretical contribution is a model of adjusting control in mncs that details the practices that enable control changes this model offers theoretical implications for organizational control theory in mncs especially in relation to theorizing the subsidiary contribution in the design of control the reconciliation of raised tensions in headquarters subsidiary relationships and the nature of unintended consequences in the adjustment process our study also contributes to theories on mnc change as it details the construction of an ongoing strategy structure alignment for strategic flexibility

the role of duration in multinational investment strategies the location of investment by multinational enterprises has been investigated from many perspectives it has been suggested that investment may be motivated by experience of a particular location represented by tenure of operations in contrast portfolio considerations suggest that increased investment in a given location increases risk exposure in this paper the question of whether a multinational with a longer duration of operations at a particular location is more likely to invest further is addressed after taking portfolio risk into account a conceptual model of multinational investment strategy is developed and empirically tested using data from a survey of multinational enterprises operating in the west midlands region of the united kingdom two innovative non parametric tests for duration dependence are applied after normalising for portfolio considerations it is found that multinational investment is significantly duration dependent i e firms with a longer tenure of operations are significantly more likely to invest in any given period this finding has important implications for the strategy of inward investment agencies in particular an investment agency is short sighted if it seeks to attract new investors if that is at the expense of neglecting multinationals with current operations in its jurisdiction

how multinational subsidiary mandates are gained and lost a subsidiary mandate is a business or element of a business in which the subsidiary participates and for which it has responsibilities beyond its national market this research studied thirty one mandates in six canadian subsidiaries of u s owned multinational corporations a life cycle framework was proposed and used to explore the factors associated with the gain development and loss of mandates by subsidiaries two key findings emerged first it was shown that there is a risk in having a full scope world product mandate because it is possible to become marginal to the corporate strategy second it was observed that the engine of subsidiary growth is its distinctive capabilities and that for a mandate to be effective it must be built on those capabilities implications for mandate sustainability are proposed on the basis of these two insights

transnational firms and the changing organisation of innovative activities it is suggested that a transition is taking place towards new modes of organising transnational corporations innovative activities first different units of multinational firms including foreign based subsidiaries are increasingly involved in the generation use and transmission of knowledge secondly multinationals are developing external networks of relationships with local counterparts through which foreign affiliates gain access to external knowledge sources and application abilities as a result of this evolutionary process multinationals organisation is subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces considerable efforts are then necessary to innovate coordination procedures and mechanisms in order to enhance the generation circulation and use of knowledge a number of empirical works are reviewed providing some evidence of the evolutionary process discussed in the paper 1 transnational companies as networks of innovators economists have long viewed innovation as being primarily generated by firms in their home countries classic contributions in the economics of multinational corporations have consolidated this view referring mainly to the us based multinationals vernon 1966 kindleberger 1969 and stopford and wells 1972 theorised a quasi colonial relationship between the parent company and foreign subsidiaries wherein the latter are in charge of replicating the former s activities abroad with strategic decisions including r d and innovation strategies being rigidly centralised particularly vernon emphasised that coordinating international innovative activities would be too costly owing to the difficulties of collecting and controlling relevant information across national borders host countries and foreign subsidiaries would then play a role almost exclusively in the adoption and diffusion of centrally created technology this view was supported mainly by us economists and based on us evidence from the early post world war ii period but it was very influential for the development of studies on the economics of transnational companies tncs and the internationalisation of

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

an empirical analysis of the integration responsiveness framework in global industries in this study businesses competing in global industries were categorized into three groups according to the integration responsiveness framework for conceptualizing industry pressures confronting business competing internationally using this framework contextual conditions associated with each group were examined competitive attributes distinguishing each group were then identified to clarify alternate business level strategies for competing within a global industry context beyond providing additional insight into the nature of competition in global industries several broad extensions to the integration responsiveness framework are suggested

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

does the size of the legislature affect the size of government evidence from two natural experiments this paper makes use of regression discontinuity designs to estimate the effect of the number of legislators on the size of government the results indicate a negative effect i e the larger the size of the legislature the smaller is the size of government this runs counter to conventional wisdom one potential explanation is that more legislators can better control a budget maximizing bureaucracy i present evidence that is consistent with the proposed mechanism

public spending and the paradox of supermajority rule this article examines the paradox that a supermajority rule in a legislature promotes excessive government spending we propose a simple conjecture if rent seeking coalitions dominate legislative politics and if individual legislators demands for rent seeking activities are price inelastic a change of legislative rules from simple majority to a supermajority will lead to greater public spending other things equal using data from u s state legislatures 1970 to 2007 we find that the adoption of a supermajority rule has a robust positive impact on various types of tax revenues and government expenditures

foreign subsidiary csr as a buffer against parent firm reputation risk this study examines the influence of parent firm reputation risk on the level of corporate social responsibility activities of foreign subsidiaries we first argue that a strong reputation risk spillover occurs from parent firms to their foreign subsidiaries due to the high visibility of multinationals the control of parent firms over their subsidiaries and the liability of foreignness associated with foreign firms in host countries then we argue that subsidiaries may resort to csr in their host country to reduce the spillover effect thus we hypothesize a positive relationship between parent firm reputation risk and foreign subsidiary csr activities moreover we explore several contingency factors at both the parent firm and subsidiary levels that affect the extent of spillover and the need for subsidiaries to use csr as a buffer against parent firm reputation risk we find that the positive relationship between parent firm reputation risk and foreign subsidiary csr activities is weaker for foreign subsidiaries that directly report to the parent firm with longer operations in the host country and larger institutional distance between host and home countries using a unique sample of subsidiaries of large multinationals in china from 2009 to 2016 we find general support for our arguments

deviations from constituent interests the role of legislative structure and political parties in the states this paper investigates the determinants of state spending over 1960 1990 recent empirical studies suggest that state government expenditure is greater than the electorate desires our main finding is that expenditure was positively related to the number of seats in a state s legislature this is consistent with the hypothesis that logrolling leads representatives to spend more than their constituents would like we also find that political parties do not have a pronounced effect on overall levels of expenditure but do influence the composition of spending in particular democratic control of state government is associated with higher levels of welfare spending

fragmented fiscal policy abstract this paper explores on a panel of 19 oecd countries the role of fragmentation in determining fiscal outcomes over the 1970 95 period we first define the notion of fragmentation of fiscal policy making as the degree to which the costs of a dollar of aggregate expenditure are internalized by individual decision makers empirically this notion has two key logical components the number of decision makers and the rules of the game or the budget process in turn the number of decision makers can refer to the number of parties in a coalition or the number of ministers in the cabinet we test all these determinants against each other and against perhaps the oldest explanation of all ideology we show that cabinet size and to a lesser degree coalition size and ideology are significant and robust determinants of fiscal outcomes in particular transfers are the budget items most affected by these factors

density dependence versus population dynamics an ecological study of failings in the california wine industry in this ecological study we show that the particular curvilinear formulation of the relationship between density and the failing rate of organizations proposed by hannan and freeman does not hold for the california wine industry between 1940 and 1985 we demonstrate instead that an alternative model focusing on prior foundings and prior failings gives a superior account of the failing rate in this population we argue that hannan and freeman s density dependent model of organizational mortality systematically overstates the negative effects of illegitimacy on business organizations we argue further that their model underestimates business organizations ability to avoid elimination by migrating to neighboring niches and by enlarging their initial niche

multinational corporations control systems and delegation issues the paper has 2 major objectives first to identify control and delegation issues confronting multinational corporation managers second to develop a conceptual model to assist multinational corporation managers in selecting appropriate control systems and determining the extent of delegation to be provided to subsidiary managers finally the paper suggests directions for future research

dual values based organizational identification in mnc subsidiaries a multilevel study dual organizational identification with both the whole corporation and the local subsidiary is considered valuable for subsidiary employees international assignees and multinational corporations mncs while extant research has examined antecedents of separate targets of identification it has not fully addressed the challenge of identifying factors capable of supporting both simultaneously this study examines the influence of individual and organizational level factors on the dual values based identification of foreign subsidiary employees drawing on acculturation and organizational socialization theory we test hypotheses on multilevel data from 793 managers and professionals in 90 foreign subsidiaries belonging to 11 nordic mncs the results show that dual values based identification is associated with acculturation and first hand contact at the individual level and a supportive social context for affective learning at the organizational level through its emphasis on higher order elements that connect different parts of the mnc rather than those that lead to the formation of in groups and out groups the values based approach to identification contributes to our understanding of dual identification in mnc subsidiaries and represents a more positive treatment of cultural diversity the findings have heightened practical relevance given the emphasis individuals are placing on values congruence in career choices and mnc efforts at instilling shared values

budget institutions and political insulation why states adopt the item veto abstract forty three of the fifty states of the united states have granted item veto authority to their governors as part of state constitutions in this paper i test explanations of why and when a legislature would cede institutional power using data from 1865 to 1994 i show that these measures are most likely proposed by fiscal conservatives who fear the loss of power in the future in order to protect their interests for those periods when they will be in the minority they implement institutions such as the item veto which will limit future liberal legislatures the results therefore shed light on two important substantive areas first by showing how the choice of budgetary institutions is endogenous to the political process it clarifies that political factors must be considered in addition to social efficiency to understand the adoption of budget institutions second it provides evidence in support of theories that have posited that electorally weak groups will heavily insulate policies in periods in which they momentarily hold power e g moe 1989 de figueiredo 2002

market seeking mnes in an emerging market how parent subsidiary links shape overseas success this study extends research on parent subsidiary links applying new theoretical perspectives those of resource dependence and dynamic capability to the new empirical setting of an emerging market we suggest that parent subsidiary links help to mitigate emerging market threats by reducing external dependence and help to capitalize on emerging market opportunities by enhancing local responsiveness

the effects of mnc parent effort and social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity although the literature provides ample evidence that the global transfer and local implementation of knowledge represents a key advantage for multinational corporations mncs we lack comparable understanding as to whether knowledge creating mnc parents can actively expand the absorptive capacity of their subsidiaries using a teacher student lens this study examines the combined impact of specific structural mechanisms and motivational processes by mnc parents on the ability of 216 subsidiaries to absorb parent initiated marketing strategies the findings reveal that mnc parents can indeed cultivate subsidiaries ability to appropriate marketing knowledge through a combination of adopting specific social structures and investing in particular efforts however the effect of social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity is indirect and accounted for by the parents intensity of effort a number of theoretical implications emerge from the findings for research on absorptive capacity in relation to the role of the knowledge source the need to examine organizational influences in relation to one another and validating the original absorptive capacity dimensions for managers in the global marketplace the findings lead to the suggestion that mncs devote attention to nurturing the absorptive capacities at different organizational levels in order to optimize the global transfer of knowledge

revisiting multinational firms tolerance for joint ventures a trust based approach in spite of the increasing popularity of international joint ventures managers express a high level of dissatisfaction with them this paper argues that overemphasis on the outcome has resulted in a neglect of the social processes underlying the outcome the paper elaborates upon the rationale for a cooperative approach towards interorganizational collaborative relationships based on trust and discusses it in the context of joint ventures this is then applied towards understanding multinational ownership preferences and tolerance for joint ventures it is argued that trust centered logic is largely consistent with approaches that emphasize the issue of ownership and deepens and enriches the insights provided by the latter a shift in focus from ownership to relational dynamics is encouraged

characteristics of foreign subsidiaries in industry clusters this paper examines the characteristics of foreign owned subsidiaries in export intensive leading edge industry clusters as defined by porter 1990 using a sample of 229 subsidiaries from three countries we show that subsidiaries in such clusters are more embedded more autonomous and more internationally oriented than subsidiaries in other industry sectors we also show that there are significant differences in the roles of foreign owned subsidiaries from one leading edge cluster to the next that are associated with the dynamism of the cluster and the overall level of foreign ownership the results indicate 1 that typologies of subsidiary roles should give increased consideration to environmental factors and 2 that thinking on industry clusters instead of treating them identically should recognize that they have heterogeneous characteristics

the evolution of research on coordination mechanisms in multinational corporations the mechanisms of coordination used by multinational corporations mncs are studied through an exhaustive literature review a pattern of evolution is found as time has passed researchers have concentrated more on subtler and informal mechanisms abandoning their unidimensional focus on structural issues it is suggested that the increase in the study of those mechanisms may be due among other reasons to the fact that mncs are indeed making more use of them that could be explained by changes in the international competitive environment which force firms to adjust their strategies requiring ever more multidimensional coordination

legislative organization and government spending cross country evidence abstract the law of 1 n posits that an increase in the number of elected representatives fuels excessive government spending despite its wide acceptance as a stylized fact the law of 1 n has received only limited empirical scrutiny and the existing evidence for the american states provides mixed support for the thesis this paper examines the law of 1 n in bicameral and unicameral legislative structures using a cross section of democratic countries the results indicate that legislative size matters under both legislature structures but bicameralism dampens the 1 n effect relative to unicameralism

mnc subsidiary channel relationships as extended links implications of global strategies foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations mncs rely on external partners such as channel partners to achieve global objectives we conceptualize the subsidiary s channel partner as an extended link of the mnc s internal network thus the subsidiary s adaptation and execution of the mnc s global strategies should influence the subsidiary s channel relationship and performance building on the strategy environment alignment framework we study the influence of mnc global strategies global efficiency multinational flexibility and worldwide learning on a subsidiary s channel commitment and the moderating influence of the host country environment survey data from german and japanese mncs in the united states indicate the importance of global strategies to a channel relationship for example we find that an emphasis on multinational flexibility is detrimental but worldwide learning benefits the subsidiary s channel commitment we also find that the host country environment plays a contingent role for example a global efficiency strategy is beneficial for channel commitment in a stable environment but detrimental in a dynamic environment our research offers key implications for mncs we suggest that when mncs decide to lay emphases on global strategies the mncs should consider not just their internal subsidiary network but also their extended channel partner links that function in foreign markets

global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy we combine the concept of location derived by economic geographers with theories of the multinational enterprise mne and the liability of foreignness developed by international business scholars to examine the factors that propel mnes toward or away from global cities we argue that three distinctive characteristics of global cities global interconnectedness cosmopolitanism and abundance of advanced producer services help mnes overcome the costs of doing business abroad and we identify the contingencies under which these characteristics combine with firm attributes to exert their strongest influence consistent with these arguments our analysis of a large sample of mne location decisions using a multilevel multinomial model suggests not only that mnes have a strong propensity to locate within global cities but also that these choices are associated with a nuanced interplay of firm and subsidiary level factors including investment motives proprietary capabilities and business strategy our study provides important insights for international business scholars by shedding new light on mne location choices and also contributes to our understanding of economic geography by examining the heterogeneous strategies and capabilities of mnes the primary agents of economic globalization that shape the nature of global cities

the challenge of autonomy and dependence in franchised channels of distribution abstract an enduring challenge for franchise management involves the reconciliation of 1 the franchisor s desire for standardization consistency and control for the preservation of its goodwill and brand equity and 2 the franchisee s quest for autonomy especially because franchises are frequently sold on the platform of be your own boss and have historically attracted would be franchisees with self employment histories and strong streaks of independence and autonomy building on arguments derived from agency theory resource dependence theory the locus of control argument and the countervailing power premise the present study attempts to evaluate 1 the interrelationships between the concepts of autonomy and dependence and 2 the influence of competition success experience and multi unit ownership as determinants of the various autonomy dependence perceptions it is suggested that contrary to the dominant perspective nested in the markets versus hierarchy dichotomy which portrays the sentiments of dependence and autonomy as opposing theoretical variables i e they are envisioned to exist only in high low combinations of these two constructs even their high high and low low combinations can emerge within a franchise setting and that these diverse behavioral settings entail unique management challenges the empirical portion of the study utilizes data drawn from the franchised channel of fastfood restaurants the results support the emergence of all four combinations of dependence and autonomy i e the traditional high low combinations as well as the high high and low low combinations suggesting that behavioral settings of franchises are indeed richer than hitherto imagined it appears that because franchisee franchisor relationships encompass several domains they each feel dependent on the other party in certain domains and simultaneously autonomous in other domains the environmental factor of competition the relationship factor of business success experienced in the franchise system and the structural factor of multi unit ownership emerged as significant predictors of dependence and autonomy notably however the countervailing power argument was not supported by the data the multi unit ownership effects were especially strong and provided a more direct test of the alignment of goals and incentives envisioned by agency theory we conclude by identifying four categories of franchisees with distinct gestalts that franchisors would do well to learn to manage in the spirit of portfolio management

supermajority rule and bicameral bargaining this paper revisits the claim that supermajority rules and bicameral legislative structures restrain excessive government spending and taxation our analysis suggests that the extension effect of a supermajority rule that requires logrolling across additional members increases with the ratio of seats in the house relative to seats in the senate using a panel of us states 1970 2008 we find that the ratio of house to senate seats has a robust positive impact on the tendency of a supermajority rule to inflate the budget our finding implies that a supermajority rule can have a perverse effect on budget outcomes in bicameral legislatures owing to two factors the geographic overlap between chambers and the low price elasticity of demand for public goods

nationality cultural distance and expatriate status effects on the managerial network in a multinational enterprise we study the role of three characteristics of international managers nationality cultural distance and expatriate status for their network ties a network analysis of cross subsidiary interactions among 457 managers in an mne demonstrates that managers form strong expressive ties with peers with smaller cultural distance and from the same status group however managers form strong instrumental ties with peers who are different on these background characteristics the implications for international management theory and practice are discussed

the use of process and output controls in foreign markets this study builds upon previous control research to propose a model of formal controls used in managing activities performed in foreign markets theoretically derived contingency relationships are also proposed to assess the performance consequences of different formal control types the findings support the importance of internal and external sources of uncertainty in determining the type of control used partial support was also found for the premise that the fit between the type of control used and the type of uncertainty perceived will contribute to superior performance

do large cabinets favor large governments evidence on the fiscal commons problem for swiss cantons abstract the fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending in political economics for a panel of the 26 swiss cantons over the 1980 1998 periods this paper explores the role of fragmented governments on fiscal policy outcomes we distinguish between two variants of fragmented governments cabinet size and coalition size in addition we analyze whether constitutional rules for executive and legislature as well as formal fiscal restraints shape the size of government and how different rules interact with fragmentation the results indicate that the number of ministers in the cabinet is positively associated with the size of government while fiscal referendums effectively restrict the size of government there is also evidence that fiscal referendums relax the fiscal commons problem to some extent

the economic efficiency of backward vertical integration in the international petroleum refining industry a benefit of backward vertical integration in the petroleum refining industry is reduced uncertainly in the supply of crude oil for refining however there is no a priori reason to believe that refiners are more skilful in managing combined refining and crude oil production operations than are specialists in these functions using the concept of frontier production functions efficiency differences between firms with differing degrees of backward vertical integration are estimated backward vertical integration improves scale efficieny and reduces business risk significantly but it reduces both technical and overall economic efficiency this is the first comprehensive empirical test of the efficiency of vertical integration in the literature

international human resource strategy and its determinants the case of subsidiaries in taiwan this paper explores how the tension between global integration and local responsiveness affects the dimensions and determinants of international human resource ihr strategy to accomplish this jarillo and martinez s 1990 business strategy framework for parents and their subsidiaries was recast in an ihr strategy setting then the relationships between the two dimensions of ihr strategy that emerged global integration and local responsiveness and a set of interorganizational interdependency variables were explored several new and informative associations between the interorganizational interdependency variables subsidiaries dependence on parent s resources local resources and hot institutions and ihr strategy were observed in a sample of one hundred subsidiaries of japanese u s and european mncs operating in taiwan

the impact of government structure on local public expenditures though the relationship between local government structure and expenditure has received considerable attention there is little consensus as to how the features of representative government affect local expenditure an exception is city council size which has consistently been found to be positively related to spending previous results rely on cross sectional estimation which may be subject to omitted variable bias this paper analyzes three components of municipal governments the form of government the size of the city council and the election method of city councilors once fixed effects estimation is employed the positive relationship between city council size and expenditure disappears

do supermajority rules limit or enhance majority tyranny evidence from the us states 1960 1997 buchanan and tullock 1962 demonstrates that supermajority rules can reduce tyranny of majority problems in a democracy however recent theoretical work by dixit grossman and gul 2000 postulates that this static analysis of supermajority rules may be inadequate to explain political decisions in a dynamic setting in fact supermajority rules may increase the incidence of majority tyranny because of rotating political representation using data from us state legislatures we examine the effect of supermajority rules on different categories of government expenditures and tax revenues during the latter half of the 20th century we find supermajority rules have little effect on general government expenditures and tax revenues however supermajority rules are associated with lower public welfare transfers which supports the traditional analysis of the fiscal effects of supermajority rules

offshoring innovation to emerging markets organizational control and informal institutional distance the literature on innovation offshoring has focused on the dichotomous choice between two distinct investment strategies captive offshoring and outsourced offshoring we use the concept of organizational control to investigate how differences in the informal institutions that prevail in the home and host countries influence multinational enterprise mne strategy or the organizational control decision with respect to subsidiaries established to offshore innovation while the relationship between formal institutions and mne strategy has been the subject of considerable academic scrutiny less is known about the role of informal institutions we propose that the type of uncertainty precipitated by informal institutions is critical to understanding the strategic behavior of foreign investing mnes we hypothesize that an mne s organizational control over a subsidiary will be contingent upon the type of informal institutional uncertainty encountered by the subsidiary more specifically we disaggregate the informal institutions construct and develop three new more explicit latent constructs behaviorally oriented informal institutions boii technology oriented informal institutions toii and demand oriented informal institutions doii our theory posits that while an increase in boii distance will precipitate a preference for greater organizational control heightened toii and doii distances will induce the opposite outcome a preference for lower levels of organizational control

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