engleski

Managing foreign subsidiaries in French mulinational corporations

Nowadays, it is essential for a multitude of companies to engage in foreign markets. However, the successful management of internationalization processes constantly poses numerous novel challenges. The attempt of this paper is to provide guidance on the multiple and complex requirements of international business activities. Authors provide empirical assessment and theoretical elaboration on the headquarters-subsidiary relationships phenomena which must be observed in international management practice. Foreign subsidiaries can add considerable complexity to the management of multinational corporations because they are located in different countries which may show varying degrees of psychic, administrative and cultural distance to the home country. But, subsidiaries are also involved in local business networks and therefore may develop different ideas since they have the approach to the diverse sources of knowledge. Multinational corporations have the potential to combine organization-specific advantages with advantages of different geographic locations through the internal transfer of resources. Since the authors’ interest lies in the relationship between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries, the focus here will be on the last form of internationalization. In the theoretical part of the paper authors illustrate the relationship between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries, the roles and assignments that headquarters have towards foreign subsidiaries and vice versa. Empirical research focuses on subsidiary roles in headquarters-subsidiary relationships and it is conducted in subsidiaries of French multinational corporations in Croatia. The emphasis is to identify whether the traditional relationship changed - from the control that was the fundamental activity done by headquarters - towards the contemporary relationship where the subsidiary is an important node within the intra-organizational network of multinational corporation.

Croatia; French multinational corporations; headquarters and foreign subsidiaries relationship; multinational corporations; subsidiary's role

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