کارآفرینی شرکت های فرعی، نیروهای رقابتی داخلی و خارجی، و عملکرد شرکت های فرعی

The Multinational Subsidiary is conceptualized as a semi-autonomous entity with entrepreneurial potential, within a complex competitive arena, consisting of an internal environment of other subsidiaries, internal customers and suppliers, and an external environment consisting of customers, suppliers and competitors. The relative strength of these competitive environments shapes the subsidiary's options; and it is then up to subsidiary manager to take the initiative to respond to the threats and opportunities to secure the subsidiary's performance. The paper, therefore, emphasizes the interplay between subsidiary entrepreneurship and the subsidiary's competitive environment—it shows how certain subsidiary attributes emerge as a function of these factors, and how they ultimately affect the performance of the subsidiary. Specific hypotheses are developed and tested on 24 Multinational Subsidiaries in Scotland.

This research was exploratory in nature and as always with case-based research it opens up as many new questions as it answers. However, it is worth making a number of final comments, both in terms of the key insights gained from the research and in terms of its implications and limitations. A key issue to consider further is the process of evolution that these subsidiaries have gone through. While the initial framing suggested that the competitive environment would affect the entrepreneurial behaviour and performance of the subsidiary, it is certainly the case that the opposite line of causality is also in effect. In other words, if the subsidiary is able to develop some autonomy, presumably through its entrepreneurial initiatives, it is much better positioned to start developing local suppliers and customers of its own, which may subsequently lead to a broader value-added scope. From what we know of these subsidiaries, most of the dual-focused and many of the externally focused groups began their lives in the internally focused group, and through a gradual process of self-improvement, credibility-building, and initiative were able to change their entire orientation. What we do not know, and would be interested to discover, is whether the ‘end point’ on this evolutionary journey is actually the externally focused or the dual-focused position. The externally oriented position is attractive to subsidiary managers because it gives them considerable freedom to act as they see fit. However, the dual-focused position offers the greater potential for competitive advantage because it combines a strong external focus with internal integration. A second point, and one which requires further investigation, is that the nature of the internal competitive arena is more complex than we had previously recognized. The most visible manifestation of a competitive internal arena was the internal benchmarking, bidding processes, and rationalization decisions that essentially pitted one subsidiary against its sister plants. Equally important, but much less visible, were the relationships between the subsidiaries and their internal suppliers and customers. The extent to which these relationships were managed on a competitive basis is not clear from our data, but it is likely to have a significant impact on the ability of the subsidiary to upgrade itself, behave more entrepreneurially and enhance its performance. Third, we should return to an issue raised at the beginning of the paper, namely the extent to which the relationships between the subsidiary and its internal and external networks are competitive or collaborative in nature. The evidence collected here suggests—perhaps not surprisingly—that they are a bit of both. The relationships between subsidiaries and their sister plants in other countries, for example, are a fascinating blend, in that they rely on one another for transferring ideas and ways of working, but ultimately they are in competition for new investment or even (in some cases) for survival. In speaking to executives about this, their reaction was typically that the blend is relatively easy to achieve, and that is it no different from collaborating closely with colleagues with whom you are competing for promotion. On the external dimension, the subsidiary's relationships were typically more competitive in nature, though even here there was evidence of collaboration—for example, engaging in benchmarking studies with key local competitors. In sum, then, while our focus here was on a Porterian model of competitive behaviour, one should acknowledge that the relationships in question also have substantial collaborative components. Finally, further work is required on the notion of entrepreneurship in the MNC subsidiary. It must be accepted that the three dimensions of entrepreneurship analyzed do not provide a comprehensive coverage of the subject. As noted earlier, Birkinshaw, 1997 and Birkinshaw, 2000 views subsidiary initiative as a form of corporate entrepreneurship, incorporating proactive and risk-taking behaviour, the use of resources beyond the control of the subsidiary, and the acquisition and use of power and influence. To these issues should be added autonomy and motivation (at least as an antecedent of an entrepreneurial orientation); the role of subsidiary executives in developing an entrepreneurial culture; and the constructiveness of parent–subsidiary relationships. There is, therefore, a requirement to develop a more holistic conceptualization and measurement of multinational subsidiary entrepreneurship. Confirming the first point above, moreover, efforts also need to be made to disentangle cause and effect relationships between and among such variables, subsidiary performance and the competitive environment. The issue of resources requires further consideration too, with the RBV having the potential to provide a rich extension to the analysis in this paper. Two limitations should be acknowledged. First, the decision to study 24 cases in depth, rather than a larger number in a more superficial way, made it difficult to draw strong conclusions. This study certainly enhanced our understanding of the dynamics of the subsidiary's competitiveness, but it remains to be seen whether the hypotheses are borne out over a larger sample. Second, the discussion has focused primarily on manufacturing subsidiaries. It is not clear at this stage whether the ideas would also apply in other settings. The expectation is that they do, though it remains to be investigated. For example, R&D subsidiaries often have very different roles depending on the relative importance of internal and external competitive environments. In Ericsson, most R&D units are software design centres that are entirely internally focused. In ABB and Alfa Laval, by contrast, foreign R&D centres typically have a unique global mandate with their own technology and their own customer base (Nobel & Birkinshaw, 1998). And even in sales-only subsidiaries, which typically face a strong external competitive arena, there is a high degree of variation on the competitiveness of the internal arena. One acid test, for example, is whether IBM's sales people in Australia are judged against IBM's sales people in Japan, against HP or Compaq's sales people in Australia, or against both. This subsidiary-level study has important implications for the broader challenges facing the MNC. Essentially it says that the parent company has to make explicit choices about the level of competition it wants to expose its subsidiaries to, and that the choices it makes will have a significant impact on the types of activities the subsidiaries get involved in. For example Intel has chosen to focus Intel Ireland's efforts towards the internal competitive environment, and this has both substantial benefits (in terms of the ‘copy exactly’ technology) as well as potential drawbacks (the Ireland plant is not in a position to react to local market changes). By contrast, IBM has chosen to allow IBM Scotland to be much more open to the external competitive arena. This has costs, in terms of the complexities of managing a dual-focused operation, but it also offers benefits in terms of sensing and responding to changing market demands. At this stage it would be inappropriate to derive normative judgments. Clearly there is a sense that exposure to both internal and external competitive arenas has benefits, but at the same time there are costs in terms of managing complexity and reconciling awkward tradeoffs. Hopefully future research will examine this trade-off in more detail.