Abstract
The problem of effective management of company subsidiaries has been on the forefront of strategic management research since early mid-1980s. Recently, special attention is being paid to the effect of headquarters - subsidiary conflicts on the company performance, especially in relation to the subsidiaries’ resistance, both active and passive, to following the directives of the headquarters. A large number of theoretical approaches have been used to explain the existence of intraorganizational conflicts. For example, Strutzenberger and Ambos (2013) examined a variety of ways to conceptualize a subsidiary, from an individual up to a network level. The network conceptualization, at present, is the only approach that could allow explaining the dissimilarity of the subsidiaries’ responses to headquarters’ directives, given the same or very similar distribution of financial and other resources, administrative support from the head office to subsidiaries, and levels of subsidiary integration. This is because social relationships between different actors inside the organization, the strength of ties and the size of networks, as well as other characteristics, could be the explanatory variables that researchers have been looking for in their quest to resolve varying degrees of responsiveness of subsidiaries, and – in fact – headquarters’ approaches – to working with subsidiaries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the variety of characteristics of networks formed between actors in headquarters and subsidiaries, and their effects on a variety of performance indicators of subsidiaries, as well as subsidiary-headquarters conflicts. Data is being collected in two waves at a major Russian company with over 200,000 employees and several subsidiaries throughout the country.
The article was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project ‘5-100’.
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Appendix
Appendix
Questionnaire Items
Perception of Rules:
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1.
In organization there are strict rules and procedures to control and coordinate personnel working in subsidiaries
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2.
Rules and procedures that are applied to personnel in subsidiaries are developed by headquarters
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3.
Rules and procedures for personnel in subsidiaries are controlled strictly.
Interactions of Managers:
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1.
Managers are often transferred from one subsidiary to another
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2.
Managers with same functional roles in different subsidiaries and headquarter often work together
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3.
Managers are regularly transferred between subsidiaries and headquarters.
Non-Contingent Reward and Punishment:
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1.
Subsidiary is punished regardless of actual work and results
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2.
Employees of headquarters often express dissatisfaction with work of subsidiary without particular reason
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3.
Headquarters often criticizes subsidiary even if subsidiary does work well.
Feedback Quality:
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1.
Headquarters always express approval if subsidiary works well
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2.
Subsidiary receives reward in case its results exceed expectation
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3.
Subsidiary receives regular feedback on its performance from headquarters.
Feedback Speed:
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1.
Subsidiary receives answers from headquarters to its requests as soon as possible.
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2.
It takes a lot of time to make decisions in headquarters even for a simple task.
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Milekhina, A., Artyukhova, E., Kuskova, V. (2018). Organizational Networks Revisited: Predictors of Headquarters-Subsidiary Relationship Perception. In: van der Aalst, W., et al. Analysis of Images, Social Networks and Texts. AIST 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11179. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11027-7_5
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