Developing Strategy from the Middle:Subsidiary Strategy and the Role of the Subsidiary General Manager

The multinational subsidiary is a unique context to study management processes relating to strategy but so far, there has not been a coherent approach identifiable in the literature. It is recognised that subsidiaries evolve over time and through their own actions and initiatives have the potential to modify the power structures of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) but little is known about the role of the subsidiary manager in this process. Wesuggest that the tensions between the headquarters perspective and the subsidiary perspective have resulted in the application of inappropriate frameworks to the study of subsidiary managers. This proposal presents an ongoingempirical study, which addresses previous issues, by testing an organising framework to study strategy development at the subsidiary level of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE)