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This paper aims to explore how institutional factors determine the adoption of employee empowerment practices by multinational enterprises (MNEs) subsidiaries in China.

This paper examines the effects of MNE subsidiaries’ external and internal institutional factors on the degree of employee empowerment practices adopted by these subsidiaries. Using hierarchical regression analysis, hypotheses were tested with a sample of 99 MNE subsidiaries operating in China.

The results show that both the informal institutions of the host country and the subsidiary’s characteristics play an important role in shaping the degree of empowerment practices adopted by MNE subsidiaries in China.

Employee empowerment practices have been increasingly used by MNEs to leverage human resources for organizational competitive advantage. Although a large body of work has studied a bundle of HRM practices as a whole adopted in MNE subsidiaries, there is a paucity of research on the specific empowerment practices in MNE subsidiaries. This research fills this important gap in the literature by investigating the institutional forces that influence the empowerment practices in MNE subsidiaries in China.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of relational embeddedness on entrepreneurship in Taiwanese subsidiaries in China that are facing an uncertain and emerging environment.

First, four case studies are conducted to modify theoretical concepts and measuring instruments to fit them into the entrepreneurial context of multinational subsidiaries in a transitional economy. In the second stage, a survey is conducted to examine the associations between relational embeddedness and subsidiary entrepreneurship. A total of 265 executive officers, which is approximately 29 percent of 922 managers in the mailing list, reply to the questionnaire on their subsidiaries.

This study finds that subsidiary entrepreneurship has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with regards to customer or supplier relational embeddedness, a positive relationship with corporate relational embeddedness and no relationship with government relational embeddedness.

Based on this study of Taiwanese subsidiaries operating in China there is an inverse‐U‐shaped link between relational embeddedness and customers and suppliers. Hence, this study confirms that over‐embeddedness with customers or suppliers negatively influences subsidiary entrepreneurship.

The aim of this study is to explore the drivers of the evolution of a subsidiary’s strategic role from an ordinary subsidiary into a springboard subsidiary in multinational corporations, paying special attention to the role of subsidiary management in this transformation.

The authors apply a case study methodology to analyse the transformation of three Spanish subsidiaries of European multinational companies into springboard subsidiaries to pursue opportunities in the Latin American region.

The results present evidence that the development of a springboard subsidiary’s role is influenced by a set of preliminary factors that include: (1) the coincidence of a favourable economic change in the target region of expansion and unfavourable market conditions in the springboard subsidiary’s home market; (2) location-specific advantages of a subsidiary that allow it to develop unique capabilities, such as the ability to reduce the psychic distance between the headquarters and target region, to balance intra-regional conflicts within the target region, and to effectively transfer knowledge from the headquarters to the target region; and (3) micro-political headquarters-subsidiary negotiation processes as a result of the subsidiary’s strong initiative, peculiarities of the structure of a multinational company, and a strong dependency of the headquarters on the subsidiary’s unique capabilities.

The study contributes to the International Business literature by providing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of springboard subsidiaries and explaining how ordinary subsidiaries located in saturated markets can trigger organisational change and achieve the extension of their strategic role.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize that procedural justice has a contribution to parent‐subsidiary links within multinational enterprises (MNEs).

A mailed survey is adopted in this study. A total of 152 valid and complete questionnaires were returned from the respondents. Structural equation modeling and Chow test are used in this research paper.

Based on structural equation modeling, three significant dimensions of the parent‐subsidiary links are found to contribute to the financial performance of the subsidiaries (resource commitment, information flow, and control flexibility). Based on Chow test, these dimensions can lead to better financial performance under greater procedural justice in the decision‐making processes of MNEs.

This study only collected information from Taiwanese multinational firms in East Asia and the Pacific countries, including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Generally, these regions are the emerging market, with structurally volatile but fast‐growing economies. In addition, further studies can extend the research to other countries. Environmental interferences, such as culture and legal rules, were not considered in this study.

In reality, although the due process is sometimes neglected because of time limitations or lack of patience, superior managers still should pay more attention to the processes of strategic decision making to keep the procedure fair and transparent.

This paper underlines the importance and value of the procedural justice in MNE management. The exercise of the procedural justice motivated subsidiary managers to aim for better financial performance with voluntary effort and their best ability.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The paper seeks to explain the collaborative intent, trust development, and conflict resolution in a headquarters‐subsidiary relationship in a new product launch context in an emerging market.

Grounded theory development is employed through personal interviews with senior executives of selected multinational firms operating in Turkey.

A major challenge in collaboration is convincing both parties to the dyad that the expertise of the other party is essential for effective collaboration.

The findings are based solely on looking at the subsidiary side of the subsidiary‐HQ dyad in a single country, which limits their generalizability. Since we did not interview the HQ side of this dyad, speculations made about the possible reactions of HQ personnel to subsidiary actions must be interpreted with caution.

The perceptions of both parties play a far more important role than the facts or perceptions of just one party when it comes to relationships and conflict resolution. Both parties need to pay more attention to the possible causes of means incongruence and take perception gaps and the other side's needs and expertise into account when approaching collaboration and conflict resolution.

Agency theory is extended to a multinational firm‐subsidiary context in order to suggest mechanisms for resolving conflict through increased communication, greater trust in each other's capabilities, and greater collaboration in meeting common challenges. A diagnostic and prescriptive framework and mechanisms are also offered through which disruptive conflict can be transformed into functional conflict and collaboration.

This paper aims to outline the current and future influence of digitalization on the corporate parenting styles (CPSs) of multinational corporations (MNCs).

The authors used conceptual modeling in this study.

The authors identified five types of CPSs (Hypnos, Cronus, Rhea, Zeus and Athena). The overall impact of digitalization on CPSs is related to new, formidable opportunities for decreasing costs and increasing the efficiency of the intra-corporate transfer of knowledge and talent. Furthermore, digitalization leads to greater tightness in subsidiaries’ performance targets and greater intensity of control over subsidiaries’ activities, lower degrees of subsidiary autonomy and lower level of trust between the corporate headquarters and subsidiary managers. These effects endanger the existence of two CPSs (Hypnos and Athena) and significant changes for the other three CPSs.

Digitalization may lead to more homogeneous corporations, with the lower variety of CPSs and the greater centralization of decision-making in corporate and regional headquarters and stronger control on operations and performance of subsidiaries. Increased opportunities of a horizontal value transfer (knowledge) within the corporation will present an additional competitive advantage of subsidiaries of MNCs. The increased ability and willingness of corporate and regional headquarters of value appropriation from subsidiaries in different forms (profit, revenues, knowledge and talent) will force subsidiaries to use that additional competitive advantage to become more aggressive competitors in local and global markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt in the academic literature to predict the mutation of CPSs of MNCs under the impact of digitalization.

Many FDI studies focus on the advantages that businesses can gain through internationalization and internalization. More recent research has indicated that such traditional theories or perspectives may not sufficiently explain the subsequent success or failure of a firm’s operation in a foreign country, because the advantages gained through FDIs could be greatly affected by their strategic management in the host country environment. This study focused on the issue of a firm’s resources on its subsidiary’s competitiveness in a foreign country. A survey was undertaken in China. All companies participating in the study were small and medium‐sized Singapore‐China joint ventures and Singaporean wholly owned enterprises in China. The findings indicated that the variance in a firm’s performance in a foreign country can be largely explained by the six dimensions of firm resources: (1) technological resources, (2) owner/top manager’s managerial skills and capabilities, (3) employee’s Guanxi skills, (4) employee’s professional/technical knowledge, (5) the firm’s internal relationships and, (6) the firm’s external relationships. Among these six dimensions, employees’ professional knowledge and Guanxi skills, as well as a firm’s internal and external relationships, are significant predictors of Singaporean SMEs’ success in China.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information for the companies that pretend to transfer knowledge to their subsidiaries situated in an least developed country (LDC), because of the local operative specificity which is influenced by three analytical dimensions: first, the multinational enterprise's (MNE) ability to transfer knowledge; second, the climate of cooperation between the MNE and its subsidiary; and third, the subsidiary's absorptive capacity.

The present case study deals with three companies with subsidiaries in Mozambique which develop activities in the industrial sector, where the procedures of the analysis of contents are applied in order to answer the research questions.

The results show that the transferred knowledge must be directed at the operational needs felt locally. It must be avoided that the receiver believes the transferred knowledge is imposed by the transmitter, in order for it to be used as an asset in the production of new products, but without reproducing the MNE headquarters' business model because of the specific local context.

The case study method does not allow the results to be generalized, but it permits the investigation of a combination of problems of the phenomenon thus contributing to its better understanding.

The results obtained contribute to a better understanding and greater efficiency of the process of knowledge transfer to the subsidiaries situated in an LDC, taking into consideration the particular characteristics of the local market and the local absorptive capacity.