The multifaceted ownership change of foreign subsidiaries: The diverse responses to different types of negative performance feedback

Abstract

Research SummaryBy integrating performance feedback theory and ownership management literature, we examine how parent multinational companies (MNCs) evaluate their foreign subsidiaries' poor performance against various aspirations and make multifaceted ownership change decisions. Our results show that social aspirations matter more than historical aspirations in ownership change decisions. When a focal subsidiary is underperforming relative to industry peers or overseas subsidiary peers, its parent MNC tends to change its ownership of foreign subsidiaries and by a high degree. However, regarding the direction of ownership change, a foreign subsidiary with performance below industry peers tends to experience an ownership decrease, whereas the opposite is true when a subsidiary's performance is below overseas subsidiary peers. Overall, we extend existing theories that downplay the role of aspirations in ownership changes.Managerial SummaryEffective ownership management in foreign subsidiaries is key to sustaining the global operations of MNCs. An important task for parent managers is to make sense of the poor performance of their foreign subsidiaries against various aspirations and respond in terms of ownership change decisions. We find that managers are more sensitive when their foreign subsidiary's performance is below its social peers than below its past performance. Specifically, parent managers tend to change ownership to a large extent when their foreign subsidiary is poorly performed compared with its industry peers as an external benchmark or overseas subsidiary peers as an internal benchmark. Moreover, parent managers tend to reduce ownership when the subsidiary's performance is below industry peers, while are more likely to increase ownership when the performance is below its overseas subsidiary peers.