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While the Bay Area’s history has shaped today’s culture, there is little written about how corporations affect their immediate communities. This thesis focuses on the largest corporations in the Bay Area to determine if these corporations have any effect on the surrounding communities. The study focuses on Fortune 500’s list of Largest Corporations for 2011, and within that list, the top 30 companies located in the nine Bay Area counties. These nine counties include: Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Marin County, Napa Country, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, Solano Country, and Sonoma County. Using each corporations’ headquarter address as the reference point, a 1-mile radius surrounding each of the 30 companies was assessed. Data was gathered for the years 2000, 2010, and projected 2015. These data are available via ESRI’s Business Analyst Online application, which is accessible through the Texas A&M University Library’s website. Demographic information such as population, income, education, and related characteristics were reviewed. To understand the population’s lifestyle and possible implications for real estate development opportunities, the study reviewed the local demographic spending patterns, what these people do for recreation, their occupations, whether they rent or own their home, how they travel to work and their commute times, and other lifestyle variables. There were 40 variables tested and 53-percent of those variables produced statistically significant results. While the Demographic variable yielded a 56-percent statistical significance rate and the Consumer Spending variable yielded a 43-percent statistical significance rate, the Business variable did not produce any statistical significance. The most significant variables drawn from the reports were Demographics and Income Comparison, House and Home Expenditures, and Recreation Expenditures. This analysis provides important information regarding whether there is a statistical significance between characteristics within these companies’ 1-mile radii and the overall MSA. In the future, if a company would like to expand and build another headquarters, this analysis may provide insight on what metrics to focus on for future development. There may also be important information for future development opportunities around these 30-companies.

Headquarters of multinational corporations can be involved in their subsidiaries and help with the development and transfer of innovative ideas. However, headquarters involvement might not always be desired or needed, and it can thus be perceived as interference with local activities, potentially reducing local willingness to go the extra mile. We address the lack of knowledge about subsidiary manager behavior by answering the following question: How does headquarters involvement influence the proactive behavior of subsidiary managers to push for new and innovative ideas? Using data from 120 top managers in subsidiaries of multinational corporations, we find that the negative relationship between headquarters involvement and their subsidiary managers' support for initiatives can be reduced when socialization mechanisms such as a common corporate culture or rotation programs are put in place.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes special study report entitled: Study of shopping spaces in Hong Kong. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes special study report entitled : Study of shopping spaces in Hong Kong. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Effective communication is critical to enable the successful management of a multinational company. Without a shared language, effective communication is impossible. Previous research have not established what the role of language is in establishing strong relationships between subsidiaries and headquarters. It is argued that if effective communication is enabled through the use of a shared language and effective communication strengthens relationships between subsidiaries and headquarters, then a shared language should influence subsidiary headquarter relationships positively. A mixed method approach was used to reflect the perspective from both headquarters and subsidiaries. Questionnaires were distributed to subsidiaries and semi-structured interviews were conducted with executives from headquarters based on the results from the questionnaire. Language was found to have a profound influence on relationships between subsidiaries and headquarters but the extent of the influence varied depending on time, less hierarchical organisational structures and cultural background. Social identity theory suggested groups of ethnically similar people would cluster together and form strong personal relationships, language being one such an ethnic characteristic. The data collected challenged this theory by proving that a company identity can prove to be stronger and more influential over time, surpassing the impact of language and ethnicity. It was also found that a shared language promoted social networks and power within the organisation but that the influence is more prominent when the shared language is the official company language. The research contributed to literature by adding to the current understanding of what influences subsidiary headquarter relationships. The contribution to business is also important as attention is a scarce resource and inter unit relationships are critical to the success of any multinational company. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / zkgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

We investigate "dual headquarters involvement", i.e., corporate and divisional headquarters' simultaneous involvement in innovation development projects hosted by subsidiaries of multibusiness firms. Drawing on selective hierarchical involvement theory and the literature on subsidiary network embeddedness, we analyze 83 innovation projects in 22 multibusiness firms and find that the number of partners in the projects, rather than subsidiary intra- and inter-divisional embeddedness acts as a driver of dual headquarters involvement. We do however find that intra- and inter-divisional embeddedness is positively related to dual headquarters involvement when the number of partners in the innovation project is relatively large. These results lend support to the idea that parenting in complex organizations entail complex headquarters structures. Our results suggest that we need to go beyond simple conceptualizations of headquarters and that considering different dimensions of the innovating subsidiary's network helps in explaining dual headquarters involvement.

Nowadays, the world is facing an ocean of social problems and different types of oppressions and systemic inequality from east Asia all the way to North America can be found regarding this issue. With pointing social oppression out, a long list of groups of people is considered including immigrants, religious people, LGBTQ, black society, native Americans, Latinos and etc. as well as the difficulty of relationship between these people with other groups. Many of these problems are the outcomes of the government behavior and written laws in the country's constitution which caused an inequality in society and daily life. Having said that, one of the most important questions is "what is the role of architecture here or what more can architecture do to solve any of those social problems?" In fact, the role of the governments is determinative and some of the social problems should be solved by the government, but architecture, in many different programs, could educate people to learn more about each other which in this case, in society scale, lots of social inequalities would be mitigated. While looking at several studies about social oppression and learning more about different types of groups in society, I decided to narrow down the strata to find an appropriate audience for my thesis project. In my opinion, one of the most interesting group of people in every society all around the world is women. My main focus in this research is to discuss more about women's future in society and argue political issues that women are facing nowadays. According to the rich history of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the wide range of activities that this organization has done for women's rights, I decided to choose NOW as my case study to re-imagine a new Headquarter at the middle of the Washington D.C in a very fast growing Navy Yard neighborhood at the intersection of the M Street SE which is main corridor of this neighborhood and New Jersey Avenue SE which is a direct way to the U.S. Capitol Building . To sum up, my goal in this project is to bring architecture to help the oldest women's organization in the U.S. in a new decade of politics for women. / Master of Architecture / All around the world people must deal with social problems and systemic inequality issues. Women as the most vulnerable and valuable group of people in the world we live are the main audience for this thesis project. This study focuses on discussing more about the women's future in society regarding political issues that they are facing nowadays, also it emphasizes the role of architecture in solving any of these social problems. This project is about designing a new headquarters for the National Organization for Women (NOW), currently located in Washington D.C, as the main case study to help the oldest women's organization in the U.S. in a new decade of politics for women. The outcome of developing this research is to send a greater symbolic message about the women's future, a symbol that represents efforts and movements. In a way of educating people about future politics or trying to get the people together, hosting some of the most important conferences in the country, and making a platform to identify different cultures, this project is going to be a new landmark of the neighborhood.

Integrating distance research with the behavioral strategy literature on MNC headquarters-subsidiary relations, this paper explores how the distance between headquarters and subsidiaries relates to value added by the headquarters. We show for 124 manufacturing subsidiaries in Europe that, on average, distance is unrelated to value added by headquarters but that this effect is contingent upon the extent to which the subsidiary is locally embedded. Only after a certain threshold level of subsidiary embeddedness, distance is negatively related to headquarters value added. This effect is more pronounced for cultural, economic, and administrative distances than for pure geographic distance, highlighting the critical role of contextual variation for MNCs.

This thesis draws upon recent, art historical scholarship in iconography and semiotics to identify and analyze key images in an iconographic program associated with murals, paintings, and posters related to the Austin, Texas music venue, the Armadillo World Headquarters, 1970-1980. Resources include South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, the Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin, personal communications, and publications concerning the artists, music and history of Austin and the Armadillo World Headquarters. There are five chapters as follows: Introduction, History of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Analysis of the Armadillo Mural and Freddie King Painting, Analysis of Posters for the Grand Opening and the Michael Murphey Cosmic Cowboy Concert, and Conclusion.