Research Seminar Invitation

Demystifying the impact of management control systems on MNC subsidiary entrepreneurship.

by Monica Masucci (Bocconi University)

A growing body of research emphasizes the need for multinational corporations to be entrepreneurial in order to sustain their market positions and competitive advantages. To search for new ideas and business opportunities, both outside and inside their structures, MNCs increasingly leverage their foreign subsidiaries. Despite evidence on their contributory role to corporate innovative activities, it also widely acknowledged that most subsidiaries act as self-interested agents.

Adopting appropriate management control systems ensuring alignment of interests without undermining subsidiaries entrepreneurial initiatives becomes, thus, a key balancing challenge for MNC headquarters. But what are the characteristics that those systems should display to allow to meet entrepreneurial imperatives and control needs at the same time? The issue is controversial and extant research provides only conflicting and inconclusive findings. This study aims at offering new empirical evidence by analyzing the impact of formal and social control modes on entrepreneurship at the subsidiary level. A proposed research design will be discussed.

Arranged by

Center for Strategic

Management and Globalization