Abstract:
In today’s competitive business environment, subsidiaries play an essential role in a
multinational enterprise’s (MNE’s) strategy. MNE’s establish and gain competitive
advantage by leveraging subsidiaries’ firm-specific advantage, local embeddedness
and global integration. Given the MNE’s global strategy, subsidiaries are assigned
specific mandates and scope requirements. However, these scope requirements
hamper subsidiaries to identidy and exploit business opportunities. Thus, the extent
to which subsidiary managers are allowed to make strategic decisions based on their
operational environment, without interference from MNE headquarters, directly
influences the subsidiary's performance. The purpose of the research is to analyse
the behaviour of the subsidiary managers by understanding their motivation,
personal characteristics and actions to influence headquarters decisions regarding
proposed scope changes. A qualitative, exploratory research approach was used to
gain deeper understanding and insights from subsidiary managers experiences in
applying upward influence on headquarters. Data was collected through twelve indepth,
semi-structured interviews with subsidiary managers within various
subsidiaries. The research outcome is a proposed subsidiary-headquarters influence
model that provides a framework subsidiary managers can use to understand the
process and nuances to influencing headquarters.
