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This paper aims to draw on the network perspective of organizational innovation to present an argument on how a subsidiary should select innovation behavior.

In this framework, the paper analyzes middle- and high-level managers of subsidiaries from various industries located in the Chinese Mainland.

The results suggest the following ideas: internal embeddedness is positively related to exploitation innovation, external embeddedness is inverted-U related to exploration innovation, the availability of alternatives positively moderates the main effects, whereas restraint in the use of power negatively moderates them.

The current study has a few limitations that provide meaningful research directions for future investigations. First, it only considers the industry and ownership as control variables. Second, this study was conducted in the Chinese context.

The analysis of the relationship between embeddedness and innovation behavior also shows that focal subsidiary must dynamically adjust the way of embeddedness on the basis of its strategy, and it can reasonable leverage strategic assets for exploitation innovation or exploration innovation. From the perspective of headquarters, establishing deep embeddedness with a subsidiary and giving it indispensable support are important to promote that subsidiary’s exploitation innovation.

The focal subsidiary should establish relationships with more alternative partners and develop relationships with power-advantaged partners through strategies such as a long-term contract, establishing an R&D alliance and entering a joint venture. Besides this, more powerful partners in the internal network should adopt various power usage strategies to promote focal subsidiary exploitation innovation and more powerful partners in the external network should show restraint in the use of power toward any subsidiary in an over-embedded situation. The result shows environment dynamism affects subsidiary exploration innovation more deeply than exploitation innovation. Consequently, managers should recognize the importance of dynamic adaptation to environmental changes and adjust their firms’ innovation behavior accordingly, especially when they are implementing an exploration innovation strategy.

The extent of embeddedness in an innovation network shapes the subsidiary innovation behavior, and this effect is moderated by power. The focal subsidiary should dynamically and strategically adjust its innovation behavior considering various its type and level of embeddedness.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the level of subsidiaries’ internal and external relational embeddedness and the degree of subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer. More specifically, the aim is to explore dual embeddedness of subsidiaries involved in the knowledge transfer process within multinational corporations’ (MNCs) network.

The authors empirically analyse 165 European subsidiaries to demonstrate the crucial role of dual relational embeddedness in the transfer of knowledge within MNCs. Data were collected via a close-ended questionnaire and processed through an ordinary least squares regression model.

Results show that internal embeddedness directly and positively influences the degree of subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer, whereas external embeddedness does not. Notwithstanding, a higher level of both types of embeddedness – known as dual embeddedness – generates multiplicative and positive effects on the degree of subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer.

Best practices and relevant knowledge follow a reverse transfer of knowledge from the subsidiaries to the internal MNC network that is facilitated by the relational embeddedness of subsidiaries. This has resulted in developing a dual embeddedness, which introduces new routines and scripts, as well as more relational links.

The research emphasises the relevance of the knowledge transfer process in multiple directions, evoking the central role of dual-embedded subsidiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the degree of subsidiary’s external and internal embeddedness and the contribution on subsidiary’s business performance of a received innovation. In particular it focusses on dual embeddedness of the subsidiary that receives an innovation from the rest of the MNC’s network.

Using Amadeus databases were selected 93 CEE subsidiaries located in six countries. Data were collected through a standardized questionnaire and three hypothesis were tested through an OLS regression model.

The results indicate that the two types of embeddedness positively affect the received innovation’s contribution on business performance. Moreover, the inclusion of the interaction term shows how a simultaneously high level of embeddedness in both external and internal business networks lead to a multiplicative and positive effect on subsidiary’s business performance. This means that external and internal embeddedness are not mutually exclusive suggesting, at the same time, the presence of interdependencies between the two networks that leads the “dual embedded” subsidiary to better received innovation performance.

The results are limited due to the sample characteristics and the conceptual focus of network theory. Regarding the first point, the results are derived from MNC coming from developed European countries that are geographically proximate. Regarding the second point, this approach neglects the limitations of networks.

These results, therefore, propose to management the need to force the subsidiary toward a dual embeddedness in order to achieve better performance when an innovation has been received.

This study puts in evidence how Eastern European policy makers should increase the knowledge sharing and accumulation in the local clusters between all the stakeholders with the aim at increasing the “appeal” of this area.

The specific contest in which the embedddedness component is analyzed is the main contribution of the paper because most of the previous research have been focussed on subsidiaries that develop and transfer the innovation. Moreover, the specific area where subsidiaries are located (Central and East Europe) may be another important contribution.

This study aims to focus on dual embeddedness as an important channel through which foreign subsidiaries access and share valuable and idiosyncratic knowledge within the multinational corporation (MNC). The authors examine the dual embeddedness challenges of foreign subsidiaries based in the context of Iran as a transitional market.

The final sample includes 144 active foreign subsidiaries in Iran from across a broad range of industries. A structured questionnaire was distributed to firms and structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze the results.

The findings reveal how building external embeddedness in an environment with potentially poor access to valuable knowledge, and risk of knowledge leakage impacts the subsidiary’s ability to subsequently transfer this knowledge within the MNC. The authors identify the significance of absorptive capacity as a way for the subsidiary to access knowledge from and share knowledge with firms in the local market.

Departing from existing work on subsidiary embeddedness in developed markets, the authors reveal how competence creating subsidiaries manage dual embeddedness and knowledge transfer in transition economies that are low in knowledge stocks. The authors unpack how subsidiary absorptive capacity enables access to local knowledge in a transitional market and increases reverse knowledge transfer in the MNC. In doing so, the authors answer calls for work on the dynamic and complementary relationships that exists between subsidiary dual embeddedness, absorptive capacity and knowledge sourcing in less open markets. Focusing on Iran as a transitional economy, this study provides greater contextual nuance to the extant literature on subsidiary dual embeddedness.

This study aims to investigate the drivers of political embeddedness and the possible outcome in terms of autonomy and subsidiary unique competences.

This study draws on resource dependence theory and applies structural equation modeling on a sample of 193 subsidiaries.

Political embeddedness is confirmed as a source of potential autonomy and the development of competences and is usually boosted by previous existing networks at the internal and external levels.

The authors investigate and discuss how multinational corporations can leverage political resources in host-country political arenas, extending their understanding of the interplay between political activities and market strategies.

This research explores how subsidiary embeddedness in different networks, both internal and external to the firm, contributes to the innovation of the service multinational corporation (MNC). Specifically, the authors analyze the different effects of networks on MNC’s subsidiaries performing competence-creating or competence-exploiting innovation activities, in the context of the service industry. The present study analyzes the data of 178 foreign-owned subsidiaries in the service sector performing innovation in Spain. The results of data analysis at two points in time show that external and internal embeddedness have a positive impact on the subsidiary innovation. Moreover, external embeddedness has a major positive influence on the competence-creating rather than on the competence-exploiting activities, while the internal embeddedness is equally important for both types of innovation. Therefore, this study contributes to further our understanding of how subsidiaries’ linkages affect innovation of the service MNC.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of occupational embeddedness.

The construct of occupational embeddedness was defined in terms of the forces that bind people to their occupation. Then a four‐part study was conducted to develop a measure of it.

In Part 1, items were developed and judgmental evidence for their content validity was generated. In Part 2 the initial psychometric characteristics were examined. The results supported the internal consistency reliability and factor structure of the measure. In Part 3, Part 2 was replicated and showed that occupational embeddedness had a negative relationship to occupational withdrawal intentions. In Part 4 a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to demonstrate that occupational embeddedness was distinguishable from occupational commitment. The paper also found that occupational embeddedness was correlated with occupational commitment but not social desirability. In addition, the paper found that it accounted for incremental variance in occupational withdrawal intentions beyond occupational commitment.

Limitations include the fact that occupational withdrawal intentions rather than actual behaviors were measured. Overall, the results suggest that the new measure has sound psychometric qualities, and adequate discriminant, convergent and predictive validity. The paper concludes that use of the measure may contribute to the prediction/understanding of career withdrawal.

A new measure of a construct that may be used to complement existing research and measures of work‐role attachment was developed.

The importance of the supply network to firm performance is well documented. Until now, the firm and its suppliers have been conceptualized as single entities. Yet, multinational corporations (MNCs) are composed of a complex, geographically dispersed internal network of subsidiaries. The supply and internal networks are inherently linked. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the interaction of these networks on firm-level financial performance.

Building on supply network, internal network and dual embeddedness research, the authors investigate the interaction of these networks using supply network data from FactSet and internal network data from Orbis. We assess the impact at the MNC level, using measures of firm-level financial performance, physical proximity between the two networks and geographic dispersion of the internal network.

The results show that the performance effect of physical proximity of the firm with its supply network is negatively moderated by the geographic dispersion of the firm's internal network. This effect can be traced back to the diminishing marginal profitability of a firm's assets. Moreover, the benefits of dual embeddedness to the individual subsidiary come at a cost at the firm-level due to the operational challenges of managing a complex subsidiary network.

This study is the first to investigate the supply and internal networks of MNCs simultaneously.

The paper extends supply network literature by considering the internal network of the focal firm and its suppliers. This paper is one of the first studies that offer an understanding of the interaction between supply and internal networks of a focal firm and the effect on financial performance.

This study aims to understand independence in internal auditing by investigating how internal auditor independence is constructed when analysed in its corporate governance context.

A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the corporate governance reports of Swedish large stock market listed non-financial companies, for three consecutive years, is undertaken, using a theoretical lens of organisational embeddedness and operational coupling to understand independence as a situated practice.

The study develops four archetypes of internal auditor independence – autarchic, instrumental, symbiotic and subservient – and discusses each archetype's implications for independence, related to tripartite relations with management and the audit committee, regarding who has the mandate to direct work and how the work is done. It finds that internal auditors always have a capacity to be independent. Although they are not independent in relation to agents in the subservient archetype, they are independent of those down the organisational chain of command, suggesting independence is both situational and relational.

The analysis contributes a novel approach to the literature and develops a conception of independence using the dimensions of embeddedness and coupling. The archetypes offer an analytical framework for future studies on independence.

Internal auditors may understand their practice differently through the archetypes that result from this study.

Internal auditors' power relations within corporate governance further an understanding of the pressures on internal auditors and their role.

This study contributes new knowledge on the situatedness of independence by showing how internal auditors are embedded and coupled helps build their independence.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that multilateral knowledge transfer emerges from two lines of thinking in the international business (IB) literature – the exploitation of multinationality and the contributory role of subsidiaries – and links three levels of analysis – headquarters, knowledge-creating subsidiaries and host-country environments.

Multilateral knowledge transfer, both vertical and horizontal, is considered in this paper as a cross-level phenomenon that emerges as a result of beneficial interdependencies between headquarters, knowledge-creating subsidiaries and their host-country environments. The paper also discusses the concept of embeddedness, which both lines of thinking draw upon, and argues that the multinational enterprise (MNE) headquarters can actually moderate both internal and external embeddedness through global strategy and organizational design.

By putting forward an integrative cross-level interdependency framework that incorporates insights from the R&D internationalization literature and the subsidiary evolution literature, this paper delineates multilateral knowledge transfer as an MNE strategy to systematically transform and integrate knowledge created at the subsidiary-level for the global competitive advantage at the MNE group-level.

Such a perspective reemphasizes the multi-level nature of IB studies and provides new opportunities for theoretical and empirical development as did the internalization theory which has theorized the conventional headquarters-to-subsidiaries knowledge transfer more than 40 years ago.