Gone are the creatures of yesteryear? On the diffusion of technological capabilities in the ‘modern’ MNC

Blomkvist, Katarina; Kappen, Philip; Zander, Ivo

doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2016.10.003

Cited by 24 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 98 publications

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“…The opportunity to generate rents abroad from these homegrown resources has been found to be one of the drivers of the internationalization of the firm (e.g., Buckley and Casson, ; Hennart, ). Even today, top‐down resource and knowledge flows from the headquarters to the subsidiaries are still considered highly important (Blomkvist et al, ; Yang et al, ).…”

Section: Charting the Path Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconceptualising Hierarchies: The Disaggregation and Dispersion of Headquarters in Multinational Corporations

Nell

Kappen

Laamanen

2017

J Management Studies

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In this paper, we provide an introduction to the Special Issue entitled 'Divide and Rule? The Emergence and Implications of Increasingly Disaggregated and Dispersed Headquarters Activities in Contemporary Firms'. The purpose is two-fold. First, we propose a conceptualization of headquarters activities as a dynamic system in which activities can be distributed organizationally and spatially. We explicitly break with the dominant view of the prior research on 'the headquarters' as a single, identifiable unit in one specific location. Second, building on the manuscripts accepted for publication in this Special Issue, we outline research implications and put forward an agenda for research on the emergence and continuous management of disaggregated and dispersed headquarters systems.

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Section: Charting the Path Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconceptualising Hierarchies: The Disaggregation and Dispersion of Headquarters in Multinational Corporations

Nell

Kappen

Laamanen

2017

J Management Studies

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“…However, the degree of autonomy might not be the same across all value‐chain activities. This is because the possibility of finely slicing value‐chain activities and distribute those within a global network allows for increased specialization within the MNE (Blomkvist et al, ; Mudambi, ; Rugman & Verbeke, ). We distinguish between autonomy in basic and advanced value‐chain activities.…”

Section: Literature Review and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, access to those location‐specific advantages is not freely available to the MNE; instead, it has to compete for access to those assets with other multinationals as well as local competitors (Hennart, ; Hennart, Sheng, & Pimenta, ). Furthermore, due to technological advancements, MNEs are able to finely slice their value‐adding activities and distribute those throughout a worldwide network (Alcácer, Cantwell, & Piscitello, ; Blomkvist, Kappen, & Zander, ; Rugman & Verbeke, ). This degree of specialization in certain value‐adding activities creates information costs and requires headquarters to cede decision‐making powers to subsidiaries (Ambos, Andersson, & Birkinshaw, ; Blomkvist et al, ; ul Haq et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, due to technological advancements, MNEs are able to finely slice their value‐adding activities and distribute those throughout a worldwide network (Alcácer, Cantwell, & Piscitello, ; Blomkvist, Kappen, & Zander, ; Rugman & Verbeke, ). This degree of specialization in certain value‐adding activities creates information costs and requires headquarters to cede decision‐making powers to subsidiaries (Ambos, Andersson, & Birkinshaw, ; Blomkvist et al, ; ul Haq et al, ). While those broader developments have been addressed in extant literature, their interconnection is still ambiguously understood at best.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining autonomy variations across value‐chain activities in foreign‐owned subsidiaries

Kingkaew

Dahms

2018

Thunderbird Intl Bus Rev

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This article is one of the first to combine the asset bundling model and neo-configurational perspective to explain autonomy variations across different value-chain activities in foreign-owned subsidiaries. We develop tentative answers to three research questions based on survey data of subsidiaries located in Taiwan and Thailand. We use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis technique to analyze the data. We found that competence bundles in primary and support activities are key for autonomy development across basic and advanced value-adding activities.Strong relationships with local business networks are more important for autonomy development than links to universities or governmental institutions. The global city location plays a lesser role than expected and the geographic distance is a hindrance to autonomy development in basic as well as advanced value-chain activities. K E Y W O R D Sasset bundling, autonomy, emerging market, foreign-owned subsidiaries, fsQCA, neoconfigurational perspective

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“…The definition entails the human decision-making entities that have the ability to engage in productive effort as well as in non-productive value-subtracted efforts. Such a definition relaxes the assumption of traditional hierarchies, where affiliates are viewed more like army formations than an interconnected heterogeneous collection of geographically dispersed subsidiaries (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1986;Blomkvist et al 2017;Hedlund 1986;Nohria and Ghoshal 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Headquarter resource allocation strategies and subsidiary competitive or cooperative behavior: achieving a fit for value creation

2020

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Integrating insights from the literature on the multinational corporation into current perspectives on resource allocation, we argue that the ability of headquarters to create value through resource allocation to subsidiaries within the multinational corporation is contingent on the complementary fit between the resource allocation strategy and the dominant behavior of the receivers of the resources. We expound on a theory and an explanation for the volatility of value creation generated by headquarter resource allocation that includes multiple layers of hierarchy. As a corollary, we extend and contribute to the theorizing on headquarters-subsidiary relations and resource allocation by illustrating different scenarios of the resource allocation process. More specifically, we develop a two-by-two matrix of the resource allocation process that corresponds to different resource allocation strategies of headquarters (winner-picking and cross-subsidization) and subsidiary behavior (collaboration or competition) in multinational corporations. We argue that, depending on which scenario within the matrix is brought to the fore, our understanding of how the resource allocation process plays out between headquarters and subsidiaries will differ and therefore influence value creation within the multinational corporation.

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Gone are the creatures of yesteryear? On the diffusion of technological capabilities in the ‘modern’ MNC

Cited by 24 publications

References 98 publications

Reconceptualising Hierarchies: The Disaggregation and Dispersion of Headquarters in Multinational Corporations

Reconceptualising Hierarchies: The Disaggregation and Dispersion of Headquarters in Multinational Corporations

Explaining autonomy variations across value‐chain activities in foreign‐owned subsidiaries

Headquarter resource allocation strategies and subsidiary competitive or cooperative behavior: achieving a fit for value creation

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