Title: The impact of bureaucracy/red tape on the employees of multinational enterprises

Authors: Sabine Scheffknecht-Sinz

Addresses: Leeds Metropolitan University City Campus, Leeds, LS1 3HE, UK

Abstract: Large multinational enterprises are key pillars of the global economy. Their success or failure may impact whole regions or industries and with this not only their own employees but also a broader group of people. Reason enough to focus exactly on this kind of organisation within this research. Although the size of a business is per definition no criteria to identify a multinational enterprise, the focus of the actual research lies on large multinational enterprises as the degree of bureaucracy/red tape seems to be higher the bigger the organisation. This bureaucracy/red tape and its impact on the employees is the core theme of the research. Many studies confirm a correlation between the employee satisfaction/motivation and the success of a business. It is clear that this satisfaction/motivation depends on various different criteria. However, bureaucracy/red tape might be one of them but has not yet been evaluated within literature at all. Furthermore, this topic implies a special challenge as a certain amount of bureaucracy seems to be inevitable to be able to manage a large organisation. The results of this research will show how multinational enterprises could overcome this challenge and even could take advantage of an optimised bureaucratic framework.

Keywords: bureaucracy; red tape; multinational enterprises; MNEs; employee motivation; employee satisfaction; business success.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2014.058033

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2014 Vol.12 No.1, pp.98 - 108

Published online: 16 Jun 2014 *

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