With the relocation of the production base and market of printed circuited board (PCB) industry, the enterprise value activities of Taiwan PCB house extended to overseas gradually, especially to Mainland China. Therefore, the business operation was changed to the complex multinational corporation (MNC) management style from the simple single-side enterprise management style. It is an important issue for MNC to how to design or find the suitable management control system (MCS) and to integrate and allocation the enterprises operation resource to keep the good business performance and achieve MNC¡¦s development goal or target by the suitable MCS. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between MNC organization, subsidiary strategic role, MCS and business performance through interview with five Taiwan PCB houses who invested in Mainland China at least five years. The study results are as following: 1.The design of MCS for MNC¡¦s parent company and subsidiaries is based on the subsidiary strategic role, management characteristic and organization type. 2.The parent company of Taiwan MNC would like to modify their own MCS while subsidiary¡¦s business operation scale or situation has any change. 3.Since the MCS is executed efficiently, the operating performance of these case companies can be kept at a certain level.

With the emergence of China market, MNCs are so attracted by it on one hand, and so afraid of the high failure ratio of entering the Mainland China market. During the process of chasing the Mainland China market, MNCs usually rely on the subsidiaries of Taiwan for support, and utilize it to enter Mainland China. However, with the marker of Mainland China turning bigger and bigger, lots of MNC Taiwan subsidiaries seem to face the threat of substitution of China Subsidaries, and come up with the question weather Taiwan subsidiaries should be continued or not. This study has focused on the subsistence of Taiwan subsidiaries and the relationships between the Cross-Strait subsidiaries. This research is under the observation of Taiwan subsidiaries¡¦ value, Cross-Strait subsidiaries¡¦ resource asymmetry, and the nature of value activities, to explore how these variables influence the subsistence of MNCs¡¦ Taiwan subsidiaries. By Use of the strategic role of MNC subsidiaries, subsidiaries¡¦ dependence on MNCs, resource based view, and subsidiary¡¦s network characteristics, this research probe into the independent variable that influence the subsistence of Taiwan subsidiaries and the relation between Taiwan and China subsidiaries. This research uses questionary survey to collect data. The population is the list of foreignenterprises in Taiwan published by Dun and Bradstreet, 1999 / 2000. The subsidiaries belong to manufacturing industry and non-financial service industry and are owned by foreign MNCs. The scale of these subsidiaries is above 30 people and still under operation by now. We use multi-regression analysis, ANCOVA analysis, and binominal logistic regression analysis to examine the effects of independent variables on Taiwan subsidiaries¡¦ threat of subsistence. After analyzing 59 MNCs¡¦ Taiwan subsidiaries, the results reveal that the importance of Taiwan subsidiary, the resource and capability of Taiwan subsidiaries, the integration of Taiwan subsidiaries with MNCs, the local responsiveness of Taiwan subsidiaries , the industrial embracement of Taiwan subsidiaries, the similarity of value activities between Taiwan and China subsidiaries, do have influence on Taiwan subsidiaries¡¦ subsistence. In addation, different kinds of relation between Taiwan and China subsidiaries have its specific combination of dependent variables, and imply different degree of threat of subsistence.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

Univ., Diss.--Bayreuth, 2000.

This dissertation investigates the factors that influence the learning of subsidiaries from their local environment and the sequential knowledge outflow from the subsidiaries. Scholars have recognized the ability to learn from diverse local environments as a critical source of competitive advantage for multinational corporations (MNCs). However, the factors influencing the extent to which MNCs learn from local environments in order to develop innovative capabilities have not been well understood. Considering the complexity of institutional environments faced by subsidiaries, this dissertation explores cross-level factors that influence subsidiary learning from diverse local environments. At interface levels, a subsidiary's local embeddedness and its learning strategy influence the awareness of local strategic knowledge by the subsidiary. At context levels, local market competition and corporate entrepreneurial culture affect the motivation of a subsidiary to learn from diverse local environments. Finally at subsidiary level, top management team heterogeneity impacts the capability of a subsidiary to learn. This dissertation applies both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Multiple-case studies provide rich details, while survey research tests the generalizability of the proposed conceptual model. Overall, the empirical evidence supports the impact of local embeddedness, learning strategy and corporate entrepreneurial culture on subsidiary learning, and in turn, on knowledge outflow. The impact of top management team heterogeneity turns insignificant upon the simultaneous inclusion of all other factors. The influence of local competition is absent. The control variables include size, technology resources, and internationalization. This dissertation contributes to both MNC and organizational learning literature. The major contribution to MNC literature is the advancement of the understanding of knowledge acquisition and creation of MNCs by learning from the local environment. The cross-level approach with subsidiary as the unit of analysis provides a unique perspective. The major contribution of this dissertation to organizational learning literature lies in the development of a learning framework, and its application to MNC context with empirical tests. This dissertation presents potentials to advance the local responsiveness-global integration framework with a knowledge-based view. / Ph. D.

What determines the value an MNC's headquarters adds to its own affiliates? In this paper, we shed light on this question by linking the embeddedness view of the multinational corporation to the literature on parenting advantage. We test our hypotheses on an original dataset of 124 manufacturing subsidiaries located in Europe. Our results indicate that the external embeddedness of the MNC is an antecedent to headquarters' value creation. We find that headquarters' investments into their own relationships with the subsidiaries' contexts are positively related to the value added by headquarters. Furthermore, this relationship is stronger when the subsidiary itself is strongly embedded. We discuss implications for the MNC literature, embeddedness research, and the literature on parenting and headquarters' roles. (authors' abstract)

A mandate is “a business, or element of a business, in which the subsidiary participates and for which it has responsibilities beyond its national market” (Birkinshaw, 1996, p. 467). In the past MNCs set up subsidiaries as miniature replicas of the parent firm but with a changing global market the role of the subsidiary has developed into holding specific mandates. Much has been written about how subsidiaries gain mandates, but in this paper we focus on what causes a subsidiary to lose its mandate. By using AstraZeneca’s R&D unit in Södertälje as a case we examine the loss of mandates and to what extent technological capabilities are connected to the loss of mandates. The paper shows that explaining the loss of mandates is complex and requires consideration of several perspectives. We here provide a starting point for other researchers to continue upon.

Background: The Swedish economy is dependent on exports as it represents 45% of the country's GDP. Simultaneously, Swedish exporting market shares are decreasing on a global scale. In the Swedish government's export strategy which is primarily aimed at Swedish SMEs, the goal is to benefit from future growth expected to originate from the Asian marketplace. The Asian region is expected to represent 44% of future economic growth until 2020, compared to 19% and 23% in Europe and North America respectively. More Swedish SMEs therefore need to enter the Asian market and in order to implement their strategies and operate efficiently, well-suited management control systems must be in place. Purpose: This study’s objective is to identify implemented features of management control systems in Swedish SMEs' located on the Asian marketplace, as to facilitate sustainable future market presence. Contribution: The study identifies several management control aspects which affect a successful establishment of Swedish SMEs on the Asian marketplace, through subsidiaries or strategic partnerships, namely control tightness, communication, budgeting, incentive systems, cultural controls, and end customer controls. The extent to how and when such mechanisms are efficient are dependent on several contingent factors relating to for example national culture, type of presence, and the industry in which the SMEs operate.

This study investigates how the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) reconfigure their resource bases to respond to an altered strategic positioning. In particular, the focus is on the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises from emerging economies (EMNEs), which undertake transformation from export-orientation to host market-orientation in an emerging economy being host country. Two Taiwanese MNEs with subsidiaries in China extensively operated the host market are selected as case studies. This research is grounded in a preliminary conceptualisation covering three main areas: subsidiary organisations, external actors in the host country and headquarters’ functions. It provides insights into (1) how the subsidiaries align their historical resources with newly-developed capabilities; (2) how the subsidiaries govern inter-firm relations with external actors in the host environment; and (3) whether and how complementary resources are to a limited extent transferred from headquarters to subsidiaries so as to support the operations in the host market. With regards to the organisational initiatives undertaken by the case subsidiaries, it is found that the historical resources are leveraged to support the host market business, whilst at the same time developing required marketing capabilities. In addition, the concept of organisational ambidexterity is adopted to refer to way in which existing (export-oriented) and new (host market-oriented) businesses that are operating simultaneously. As to the inter-firm relations, the case subsidiaries have been mainly governing their relations with distributors by performance-based mechanisms aiming to secure stable profits. By contrast, the relation-based trust was not commonly observed among the cooperation ties. With growing brand strengths and increased direct contact with consumers, they held higher authority over the interfirm relations with distributors than during the initial stages of operating in the Chinese market. In addition, with regards to the cross-border resource transfers, two distinct modes of headquarters-subsidiary relationships emerged: a traditional one, in which headquarters allocate resources within MNEs and a novel one in which headquarters’ functions were gradually replaced by the powerful subsidiary, termed in this thesis as “migrating headquarters”. On the basis of these findings, we put forward a set of propositions that present the interrelations between the resource circumstances of case subsidiaries, the institutional environments and the organisational initiatives undertaken by the case subsidiaries. Theoretically, the contributions of this study are threefold. Firstly, it advances the research on subsidiary development by holistically exploring the: resource reconfiguration of subsidiaries, inter-firm relations with external actors and headquarters-subsidiary relationships. In particular, the resource deficiency which the EMNEs’ subsidiaries encountered and the characteristics of the required capabilities for the host market-oriented transformation, i.e. local marketing competences, were investigated. Secondly, through probing the governance mechanisms adopted regarding interfirm relations between the case subsidiaries and local distributors, this study not only addresses the question of how MNEs acquire this location-bound resource, but also advances the extant research by the aspect of network positions. That is, this study indicates that the first-tier distributors hold more relations-based interactions with the case subsidiaries than the lower-tier ones did. Moreover, unlike the reliance on informal relations suggested by extant literature on doing business in emerging economies, it is found that the economic governance mechanisms based on distributor performance have been predominantly adopted by the case subsidiaries. Thirdly, by investigating how the complementary resources are transferred to the subsidiaries, this work discovers EMNEs’ weakness at responding to the host market-oriented subsidiary transformation in terms of resource deployment within MNEs, in particular those resources that have been mostly controlled by headquarters. In addition, the term “migrating headquarters”, which represents an extreme outcome of subsidiary development, provides novel knowledge to the extant literature on the relocation of MNE headquarters by the perspective of resource circumstances. Moreover, the five components comprising dynamic capabilities in the context of subsidiary transformation are identified through the two case studies as being: capability upgrading, capability leverage, capability building, coordination capability and cooperative capability.

In this paper we build on the liability of foreignness concept and the institutional perspective to show how an equity listing and subsidiary formations in the host market are interlinked. Using a matched sample of foreign equity-listed and domestic equity-listed European firms on EU-regulated capital markets, we find that (1) the number of prior host-market subsidiary formations increases the probability of a host-market equity listing, and (2) a prior host-market equity listing increases the number of host-market subsidiary formations. Hence, we identify spillover effects between factor market and capital market strategies. However, the extent of these spillover effects depends on institutional characteristics of the host market, where companies on smaller markets gain higher spillover effects. We contribute to international management and finance research by providing factor market strategies as a valuable source to overcome capital market liabilities of foreignness and capital market strategies as a valuable source to overcome factor market liabilities of foreignness.