Business Commons^™

What Determines Mnc Subsidiary Performance? Evidence From China, Xiaowen Tian, John Slocum

Xiaowen Tian

The paper challenges the view that MNC dictates a subsidiary’s business strategy and operations in accordance with the integration-responsiveness (IR) framework. The paper integrates the IR framework with contingency theory to argue that a subsidiary needs discretion to craft its own effective business strategy in light of the environmental exigencies facing the subsidiary in the host country. It may do so at variance with the MNC’s strategy. Evidence from China supports that subsidiary managers should take strategic initiatives in response to specific host country environment.

The Retention Of Chinese Managers: The Chinese Puzzle Box, Xiaowen Tian, Michael Harvey, John Slocum

Xiaowen Tian

Extract:

Chinese Puzzle Box: a box that can only be opened through some obscure or complicated series of manipulations. Some puzzle boxes may require only a simple squeeze in the right spot, whereas others may require the subtle movement of several small parts, to open the box.

Once entering an emerging market like China, foreign multinational enterprises (hereafter MNEs) are confronted with fierce competition almost in every key functional area, including marketing, production and supply chains, finance, human resources and information technology. Yet there is one area where many Western managers do not anticipate facing keen competition and that …

Effects Of Cultural Ethnicity, Firm Size, And Firm Age On Senior Executives’ Trust In Their Overseas Business Partners: Evidence From China, Crystal X. Jiang, Roy Y. J. Chua, Masaaki Kotabe, Janet Y. Murray

Roy Chua

We investigate trust relationships between senior business executives and their overseas partners. Drawing on the similarity-attraction paradigm, social categorization theory, and the distinction between cognition- and affect-based trust, we argue that executives trust their overseas partners differently, depending on the partners’ cultural ethnicity. In a field survey of 108 Chinese senior executives, we found that these executives have higher affect-based trust in overseas partners of the same cultural ethnicity as themselves; cognition-based trust is associated with affect-based trust differently when overseas partners are of the same or different cultural ethnicity. We also examine the role of relative firm size and …