The Determinants of MNC Subsidiary’s Autonomy and Initiative—An Empirical Study of MNC Subsidiary in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Cher-Hung Tseng, 曾志弘
• Other Authors: Cher-Min Fong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51345573661135611173

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 89 === The Determinants of MNC Subsidiary’s Autonomy and Initiative An Empirical Study of MNC Subsidiary in Taiwan Abstract The research focus of MNC subsidiary has been transferred from HQ perspective to transnational network perspective. Under network perspective, MNC subsidiary’s role and function have been widely recognized. Some subsidiaries do not play a receptive role dictated from HQ, but leap to an international player or product mandate. Through fifty years economic development, the MNC Taiwan subsidiary’s role has been changed. Therefore, it is worthy to study the MNC Taiwan subsidiary’s behavior. This thesis focuses on the determinants of subsidiary’s autonomy and initiative. We define the subsidiary autonomy as the level to which the HQ delegate and the subsidiary initiative as the result of subsidiary’s autonomous innovation. The subsidiary autonomy demonstrates the subsidiary’s ability to operate independently. The subsidiary initiative exhibits the subsidiary can contribute to the whole MNC. This research utilizes the HQ—subsidiary dyadic relationship characteristics, the level to which subsidiary’s dependence on MNC, the subsidiary’s resource and subsidiary’s network characteristics as the explanatory variables to examine the effects on subsidiary’s autonomy and initiative. The rationales of the hypotheses include procedure justice theory, resource dependence perspective, resource based view and MNC network perspective. This research uses survey to collect data. The population is the list of foreign enterprises in Taiwan published by Dun and Bradstreet, 2000. The subsidiaries belong to manufacturing industry and non-financial service industry. The subsidiaries are owned by foreign MNC. Its scale is above 30 people and its operation time must exceed one year. We use cluster analysis to formulate the subsidiary role, and use multi-regression and ANCOVA analysis to examine the effects of independent variables on subsidiary’s autonomy and initiative. After analyzing 67 MNC’s Taiwan subsidiaries, the results reveal that HQ’s procedure justice, subsidiary’s integration with MNC, the subsidiary’s local responsiveness and subsidiary’s relative capability have influence on subsidiary autonomy. In addation, HQ’s procedure justice, subsidiary’s dependence of knowledge resource on MNC, subsidiary’s ownership structure, subsidiary’s entrepreneurship level, subsidiary’s relative capability, subsidiary’s local responsiveness and subsidiary autonomy can affect the subsidiary initiative. These results assert that the subsidiary’s role is highly influenced by its position in MNC network. Therefore this finding coincides with MNC network perspective. However, while examining the subsidiary’s behavior, we still can’t neglect the effects of HQ-subsidiary dyadic relationship and subsidiary’s intrinsic characteristic, its resource. Therefore, these dissertation results respond to Birkinshaw’s perspective. The subsidiary behavior is simultaneously influenced by HQ, subsidiary and local environment. Moreover, these research findings also correspond to the three subsidiary research stream, including HQ-subsidiary relationship, subsidiary role and subsidiary evolution. Finally, by conducting this research in Taiwan, this results also reply the researchers’ attention on the MNC subsidiaries in the developing countries.