Corporate Parenting Styles of the Multinational Corporation: A Subsidiary View
The Future of Global Organizing
ISBN: 978-1-78560-423-2, eISBN: 978-1-78560-422-5
Publication date: 14 October 2015
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the chapter is to evaluate the concept of corporate parenting styles, identify missing elements in the theoretical constructs, and develop new theoretical constructs.
Methodology/approach
The chapter provides a summary of the existing literature on corporate parenting styles and uncovers the missing elements in the theoretical constructs. New theoretical constructs fill the gaps.
Findings
The chapter presents a new typology of corporate parenting style by combining corporate parents’ processes of adding value to and extracting value from subsidiaries. The five-type typology of corporate styles outlines the different levels of value addition and value extraction and various degrees of reciprocity in both processes. This chapter determines the most important factors that affect the selection of corporate parenting style. It postulates that the multinational corporation should exhibit different parenting styles toward its subsidiaries simultaneously and should be ready to amend its parenting styles to reflect changes in a subsidiary’s strategy and its motives for corporate ownership.
Research limitations/implications
A new agenda for empirical studies oriented toward variability of parenting styles is proposed. Empirical tests of our propositions are needed. I encourage researchers to extend our research by considering the regional (supra-national), industry, and individual levels of analyses.
Originality/value
The chapter provides a more realistic view of corporate parenting styles than that found in the previous literature and outlines promising directions for further theoretical and empirical research.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Programme at the National Research University–Higher School of Economics (HSE). The author wishes to thank A. Verbeke for his constructive suggestions during the 40th Annual Conference of the European Academy of International Business.
Citation
Gurkov, I. (2015), "Corporate Parenting Styles of the Multinational Corporation: A Subsidiary View", The Future of Global Organizing (Progress in International Business Research, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1745-886220150000010003
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited