Multinational Corporations and Organization Theory by Dörrenbächer Christoph;Geppert Mike;Dörrenbächer Christoph;

Author:Dörrenbächer, Christoph;Geppert, Mike;Dörrenbächer, Christoph;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2017-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

HQ-Subsidiary Relations as a Discursive Struggle …

… Over Decisions and Actions Using Rationalistic Discourses

At FinPaper, managers at both sides invoked a number of rationalistic discourses to support their views on whether the initiative is ought to be recognized or not. These were often spelled out in a dry businesslike manner, stipulating that any decision has to be made in line with the efficiency and profitability maximization business rationale. By using such discourses, the struggling sides within the contested space of the MNC tried to present their claims on limited organizational resources as legitimately as possible. The rationalistic aspect in these discursive negotiations stems from the inclination of managers to present their views concerning what decisions to make and what actions to take as being beneficial for the entire MNC rather than overtly or covertly addressing the managers’ own interests. The managers strived to position themselves as good corporate citizens who are free from their respective units’ affiliations and prioritize the MNC’s interests over their own.

In support of their initiative, the Chinese managers at FinPaper questioned the business rationality of the excessive involvement of the HQ in running the local operations in China, which was justified and sustained by the presumed superiority and sufficiency of the HQ competences. To frame this resistance and their own initiative as a possible solution, the Chinese managers referred to the existing local competition in China and the deteriorating ability of FinPaper to stay competitive. For example, the ability of local Chinese competitors “to run their mills much cheaper” or to be more flexible and quicker in decision-making were raised to question whether the existing strategic approach rooted in the company’s HQ-based engineers’ “tendency for ‘golden machines’…, [their] want to make the best machines possible” was the most feasible for the Chinese context and whether what used to be the core competence of FinPaper may have become its core rigidity, so that the company’s “steps [at the Chinese market] are so slow that competitors steal [the FinPaper managers’] ideas.”

In their turn, the HQ managers also employed rationalistic discourses to frame the lack of the HQ attention to the local initiative as legitimate and justified. Ultimately, the rationalistic framing aimed at ensuring that the key decisions concerning how to distribute organizational resources stays in the HQ’s hands and the strong involvement of the HQ in the local operations in China remains intact. For instance, the lack of familiarity among Chinese managers with decision-making and reporting practices of Western multinationals, “which is quite easy to manage in the Western world … [but] is not the case in China,” was referred to. Granting Chinese managers more recognition and assigning a more active role in strategy formulation, decisions-making and implementation was argued to make leveraging the existing competences of FinPaper in China (which were seen as exclusively HQ-based) less efficient and more difficult. The local managers were portrayed as constituting a significant burden disrupting project implementation, as the following quote illustrates:

The people that we put in to do these projects,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.