Making Waves in a Huge Pond : Subsidiary Attention-Building Behaviour to Gain Strategic Influence

• This paper focuses on how strategic influence is gained among subsidiaries. By adopting an attention-based perspective of power this study develops and empirically tests a set of hypotheses aimed at explaining the impact of attention-building activities on subsidiaries strategic influence within the multinational corporation. Based on survey-data from 110 foreign-owned subsidiaries in Sweden the empirical results provide support for headquarter attention as a mediator between a subsidiary’s commitment and initiative selling -activities aimed at increasing the strategic influence within the MNC. The direct effects between the investigated attention-building activities and strategic influence remain non-significant. This suggests that subsidiaries are not able to increase their influence through commitment and initiative tactics unless they receive headquarters’ attention. The study contributes to the literature on headquarter-subsidiary relations and provide a theoretical framing by drawing on an attention-based perspective upon subsidiary power.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Multinational corporation

headquarter subsidiary relationships

subsidiary influence

power

headquarters attention

Business Studies

Företagsekonomi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)