SI Seminar with Rian Drogendijk

We examine how subsidiary-level perception of headquarters’ attention facilitates or hinders specific acts of using voice by subsidiaries, namely how a subsidiary takes the initiative to share a business opportunity with its headquarters based on the nature of headquarters’ attention received in the past. We collected a unique dataset on communication choices made by 151 subsidiaries located worldwide, from multinationals with headquarters in a single European country, combining survey data with archival material. Our main finding is that structural attention from headquarters in the past, or having been engaged as an active partner of headquarters in procedural and communication channels, explains communication moves of subsidiaries more than other forms of previous headquarters attention. This suggests that not all forms of headquarter attention stimulate subsidiaries to use their voice effectively. In fact, it is particularly a lack of structural attention makes subsidiaries feel they are out of the spotlight for headquarters, making them less confident to use their voice. This finding challenges the idea in the literature that peripheral subsidiaries can use their voice as an instrument for achieving headquarter attention. It also suggests that different forms of attention may have different effects for attention receivers.

The seminar takes place in Kilen 2.53