Title: Local subsidiaries initiatives: cultural determinants and outcomes

Authors: Hela Chebbi; Dorra Yahiaoui

Addresses: EDC, Ecole des Dirigeants and Créateurs d’entreprise, 70 Galerie des Damiers – La Défense 1, 92415 Courbevoie Cedex, France. ' Normandy Business School, 9 rue Claude Bloch – 14052 Caen Cedex 4, France

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cultural determinants of local subsidiaries' initiatives. An exploratory and qualitative research, conducted in a Polish subsidiary in the telecommunication sector, indicated that the entrepreneurial culture of the subsidiary is not the unique cultural factor affecting local initiatives, as mentioned by several researches on this subject. Two main contributions emerge from this study. First, the corporate culture (for the multinational corporation), business culture and national culture are considered as barriers to local subsidiaries' initiatives. Second, these factors enhance subsidiaries capabilities and isolation while preventing the transformation of local initiatives into hybrid and/or internal ones. The implication is that this paper provides researchers and practitioners with an overview of the main cultural factors to take into consideration in order to exploit local subsidiaries' initiatives by the whole multinational corporation.

Keywords: subsidiaries; subsidiary companies; parent companies; business cultures; corporate cultures; national cultures; local initiatives; intrapreneurship; cultural determinants; cultural outcomes; telecommunications industry; Poland; France; entrepreneurial culture; multinational corporations; MNCs; barriers; subsidiary capabilities; subsidiary isolation; hybrid initiatives; internal initiatives; entrepreneurship; entrepreneurs; entrepreneurialism; sustainable development; sustainability; innovation; human resource management; HRM; performance enhancement; organisational performance.

DOI: 10.1504/WREMSD.2012.050296

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 2012 Vol.8 No.4, pp.389 - 404

Published online: 18 Sep 2014 *

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