This book is one of the first to specifically address the subsidiary development process - a phenomenon by which multinational company subsidiaries enhance their resources and capabilities. It shows how this process is integral to multinational corporate evolution, which is largely driven by changes in subsidiaries and their development. It also illustrates how the recent trend towards greater international dispersal of value-adding activities has impacted on this process and on multinational evolution as a whole.

This book, first published in 1986, is concerned with the changing world environment for multinational business and the relationships between multinational parent companies and their subsidiaries which will be necessary to meet the challenges that are being faced. The study argues that key changes to the environment are: the revolution in manufacturing which has permitted cheap production in one location of complicated products for a world market; ‘world product mandating’, whereby all a company’s country subsidiaries produce different product lines for the world market; pressure and incentives from host governments for technology transfer in their favour and for research and development facilities within their territory; the growth of highly efficient international trading and distribution intermediaries; and the complications of increased ‘barter’ trade arising from international debt problems and currency shortages. All this means that the management of multinational subsidiaries has to change. This book reviews the challenges and shows a way forward.

In the global business environment, new organizational forms come and go but in today's multinational corporations the headquarters-subsidiary link remains the primary channel by which the firm is managed. It facilitates strategy, control and coordination, and smoothes the progress of inter-unit product, personnel, factor and knowledge flows of every kind. Using data from CEOs of a large sample of Australian subsidiaries of foreign firms, this book brings new insights into the nature of this vital corporate relationship.

Reflecting on the evolving organisation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their growing presence in international business, this book focuses on value creation by subsidiaries in transition economies, and uses Poland as an example. Drawing on internalisation and business network theory, the author analyses the role of the subsidiary with the aim of explaining the mechanisms of subsidiary functional specialisation and its operationalisation. The book presents an innovative model illustrating the determinants of the functional responsibilities of subsidiaries, whilst providing an empirical analysis of foreign subsidiaries in Poland. Addressing a vital topic in international business and management studies, this Palgrave Pivot will be useful for researchers, students and practitioners.

This book highlights the evolution of the thinking on the multinational subsidiary over a quarter of a century, from the early concerns about the 'branch plant syndrome' to very current topics relating to the Multinational Enterprise as a differentiated corporate network and its role in innovation and entrepreneurship. It summarises and evaluates the state of the art in research on the multinational subsidiary, with particular reference to managerial and economic development dimensions. The volume presents the articles of Neil Hood (written in conjunction with other leading scholars, particularly Julian Birkinshaw and Stephen Young), along with new contributions. The book will be of major interest to students, researchers and policy makers.

This book was first published in 2011. The current financial and economic crisis has negatively underlined the vital role of multinational companies (MNCs) in our daily lives. The breakdown and crisis of flagship MNCs, such as Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Toyota and General Motors, does not merely reveal the problems of corporate malfeasance and market dysfunction. It also raises important questions, both for the public and the academic community, about the use and misuse of power by MNCs in the wider society, as well as the exercise of power by key actors within internationally operating firms. This book examines how issues of power and politics affect MNCs at three different levels; the macro-level, the meso-level and the micro-level. This wide-ranging analysis shows not only that power matters but also how and why it matters, pointing to the political interactions of key power holders and actors within the MNC, both managers and employees.

The chapters in this book provide detailed analyses of a range of issues that feed into an overview of the strategic development of the MNE over the past 40 years. This modeled as the evolution of the MNE from a multidomestic hierarchy to a network hierarchy to the contemporary strategic diversity of the heterarchy. The extensive range of empirical and conceptual analysis covers the strategic roles and competitive evolution of subsidiaries; the positioning of R&D labs of MNEs; how MNEs' R&D and product development programmes relate to, and affect the performance of, countries' national systems of innovation; the ways in which dispersed subsidiaries and labs now work to support both the effective use of current competitive technologies and the generation of new sources of competitiveness for global firms. An underlying theme of the book, that is also developed conceptually, is how the global operations of MNEs involve selective involvement with national economies and the implications of this for globalization and economic development.

Multinational enterprises have become a main engine of the global economy, technical advancement, and product innovation, playing a pivotal role in the world economy and the global technological revolution. However, MNEs are also often embroiled in financial fraud and corporate scandal which show that MNEs should improve their corporate governance. Meanwhile, as COVID- 19 runs rampant across the world, populism and deglobalisation have resurged, and protectionism and unilateralism are exerting negative impacts on the world economy. Achieving sustainable development in this context is a test of a company’s management and governance abilities. How should they be governed? This book will be a useful tool for university research-led teaching and fundamental research in corporate governance theories of MNEs in general, as well as using Chinese case studies as evidence to support our theoretical arguments.

This monograph is based on an extensive dataset and a very well documented case study. Such a wealth of empirical material provides an ideal ground to test theories and enables the authors to elaborate interesting conceptualisations of some specific aspects of the broader network approach, particularly concerning the internationalisation of business networks. Anna Spadavecchia, Business History Combined with recent advances in network analysis [the book] can be instrumental in advancing our understanding, which will not only be useful for research scholars, but also provide practical guidance for managers. . . It is full of ideas which seem like deceptively simple black stones that in the hands of a skillful artisan can be turned into dazzling diamonds. Charles Dhanaraj, Journal of International Business Studies The work by Forsgren et al. offers a major contribution in terms of the analytical power of network relationships. By shifting to an exchange based perspective, they challenge the classical view of organizational power and control, but also the sources of organizational capabilities. They argue that the distinct capabilities and resources of the organization are developed through relationships and connections. Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen, Rebecca Piekkari, Joanna Scott-Kennel and Catherine Welch, Academy of Management Perspectives An interesting and insightful book. It questions a lot of traditional thinking about international firms and the way they operate. Throughout the book, the reader is invited to develop a different perspective. This perspective might be called a relationships and networks theory of the firm. While this may sound familiar, the book goes well beyond anything I have seen in the existing literature, in terms of conceptualizing relationships and networks and in using this perspective to guide and interpret case study and survey research results. William G. Egelhoff, Fordham University, US It is now well accepted in the academic literature that the multinational corporation can be usefully modelled as a network of relationships. But it is less well-known that the origins of this perspective can be traced back to work done in Uppsala, Sweden, in the 1970s and 1980s. The term business network was first used there, and many important ideas around power and influence have also emerged from this research centre. In this new book, three of the key members of the Uppsala school develop a synthesis of the more recent ideas to come out of their research on networks. By focusing on the concept of the embedded multinational they show how the internal networks of the multinational interact with the web of external networks each subsidiary unit has in its local market. This book provides a definitive and compelling point of view of the importance of networking thinking to the study of the multinational corporation. It is an important book, and it will be widely cited in years to come. Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School, UK Forsgren, Holm, and Johanson have been among the leaders in developing the idea of the multinational firm as a network that spans different country environments. This perspective cautions the easy prescription that a multinational firm can do everything easily, if it just has the right organizational form. Relationships matter, as do the legitimacy of the firm in the context of its foreign investments. This book provides rich case insights into these dimensions. Bruce Kogut, INSEAD, France This book expands the business network view on managerial issues in multinational corporations. Specifically, it scrutinises the importance of a subsidiary s external and internal business network for its strategic and organizational role within the corporation. The internationalisation of firms in terms of management issues and headquarters control, the influence of subsidiaries on decisions and learning processes within multinational corporations are examined in detail. It is argued that