A Literature Review of Subsidiary Initiative

Subsidiary initiative is the result of transformation from the passive executor of headquarters’ command to the role of independent actors who have the spirit of innovation and the ability to put into practice. Because of its impact on the group’s overall value and operational efficiency, subsidiary initiative has become one of the most important issues in the current enterprise group research. In order to clarify and identify the development context of subsidiary initiative research, and review its research trends and latest development, this paper systematically combs and reviews relevant literature from four aspects: subsidiary initiative concepts and categories, factors, implementation, and economic consequences.　　The theoretical contributions are: In view of the fragmented reality in the field of subsidiary initiative, we comb the development vein of subsidiary initiative research, sum up the deduction logic of subsidiary initiative theory, break through the lack of comprehensive cognition on subsidiary initiative, and provide theoretical support for the research deepening and practical operation of subsidiary initiative. Specifically, this paper can provide advice and guidance for managers who intend to implement subsidiary dominance, such as the subsidiary’s self-ability construction, necessary resource acquisition and rational allocation, internal and external network embedding degree balance, parent-subsidiary relationship maintenance, etc.　　Finally, this paper points out the future research trend and direction of subsidiary initiative theory. It holds that we should consider the role of dual network embeddedness of the subsidiary, focus on the cross level research of subsidiary initiative, and deeply explore the internal mechanism of subsidiary initiative. In particular, we should pay attention to the discussion of subsidiary initiative in China, incorporating background factors such as economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects of Chinese characteristics into the research, and exploring the development of local subsidiary initiative in Chinese groups.