Examining strategy diversity and interdependence in the MNC's subsidiaries and their functional activities

The increasing evolution of multinational corporations (MNCs) into differentiated networks of value-adding activities has presented enormous challenges to the analysis of strategic orientations at various organizational levels of the MNC. As MNCs have adopted less hierarchical and more interdependent strategies and structures, there is doubt about their strategic evolution over time towards a normative (optimal) transnational (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989), heterarchical (Hedlund, 1986) or multifocal form (Berggren, 1996; Prahalad and Doz, 1987; Zander, 2002). The continuing relevance of the (national) foreign subsidiary has also been questioned. Furthermore, there is confusion over what constitutes a MNC’s foreign subsidiary, especially since a separate functional value-adding activity may define the subsidiary itself (Birkinshaw and Pedersen, 2009).