The Study Of MNC Subsidiary's Decision Autonomy

The research focus of MNCs subsidiary has been transferred from HQ perspective to transnational network perspective. Under network perspective, MNCs subsidiary's role and function have been widely recognized. Some subsidiaries do not play a receptive role dictated from HQ any more, but leap to an active player in MNCs.This thesis focused on the subsidiary autonomy. The autonomy was defined as the level to which the HQ delegates to the subsidiary; it demonstrates the subsidiary's ability to operate independently. The degree of the subsidiary autonomy has an important influence on the organizational effectiveness and adaptiveness.In the past literature, most theoretical studies of the subsidiary autonomy concerned the determinants of subsidiary's autonomy, or the influence of the control mechanism on the subsidiary's autonomy, and also classified the subsidiaries according to the subsidiary's autonomy degree; little attention was paid to the autonomy per se. As to the demonstrated study of the subsidiary autonomy, scholars attached much importance to the subsidiaries in the developed countries, but overlooked the related actions of the subsidiaries in the developing countries.As a developing country with twenty years' economic development, China has obtained great achievements which attract worldwide attention. Famous MNCs set up subsidiaries in succession to occupy the market of China. Therefore, it is worthy to study the MNCs' China subsidiary's behavior. This thesis dealt with the study of the subsidiaries in the developing country, hoped to learn more about such subsidiaries as well as broaden the subsidiary autonomy theory.First, the thesis discussed the evolvement mechanism of the subsidiary's autonomy. According to the different combinations of the ability and the authorization, the thesis classified the autonomy evolvement into five patterns, which are Parent-driven Autonomy Extension (PDE), Subsidiary-driven Autonomy Reinforcement (SDR), Subsidiary-driven Autonomy Extension (SDE), Subsidiary-driven Autonomy Atrophy (SDA), and Parent-driven Autonomy Atrophy (PDA). The research divided the causation mechanism into two parts: the internal causation mechanism and the external causation mechanism. The thesis also discussed the characteristics of the autonomy within the distinct subsidiary development phases.Second, the thesis discussed the determinants of the subsidiary's autonomy. Based on the transaction cost theory, the agency theory, the resource based theory and the resource dependence theory; the research summed up four sorts of possible determinants, including the characteristics of the subsidiary, the characteristics of the HQ - subsidiary dyadic relationship, the characteristics of the subsidiary in the interior and exterior MNCs' network.According to the theoretical frame, the thesis did the Empirical analysis. The results revealed that many factors, such as the age of the subsidiary, the subsidiary's relative resource and capability, the subsidiary's value chain in the host country, the manager's experience, the HQ's procedure justice, the shared value between the parent company and the subsidiary, the subsidiary's centrality in the MNCs network, the subsidiary's local responsiveness and the subsidiary's exterior connection in the host country, have influence on subsidiary general autonomy. Then, the thesis discussed the subsidiary individual decision autonomy, and the conclusion was that the determinants which influenced the general autonomy would also affect the individual decision autonomy, but in different degrees.Finally, the thesis gave suggestions on the management of the subsidiary to the subsidiary's and the parent company's managers separately; then pointed out the limits of this research and also the possible direction of later research.The thesis analysis the developing discipline and characteristics of subsidiary decision autonomy, introduced the new influence factors to the subsidiary autonomy determinants theory frame, thus made the subsidiary decision autonomy theory completed; the thesis took the MNCS' subsidiaries in China as the demonstration subject, which also made up for the empirical study of the subsidiary autonomy in the developing country.