Ivar Padrón-Hernández, affiliated researcher at the European Institute of Japanese Studies, received the Grigor McClelland Doctoral Dissertation Award 2020 for his doctoral dissertation titled “When International Strategy Meets Local Institutions: Subsidiary Influence in the Context of Headquarter Initiatives”.
He was formerly a phd student at the European Institute of Japanese Studies and the Department of Marketing and Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics and he is currently working as an assistant professor at Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi Univesity in Japan.
Congratulations!
Abstract of his dissertation
What do foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises do when strategies proposed by headquarters clash with local ways of doing business Through 105 interviews at AB Volvo, Tomra and DeLaval, this dissertation explores, unpacks, and widens our understanding of the dilemmas and implications of subsidiaries’ dual belonging to corporate and local contexts. Findings on how subsidiaries in the United States, Japan, Germany, and France handled institutional friction caused by innovative and unfamiliar headquarter strategic initiatives are divided into four related but independent papers. Together, the papers propose a framework on how international strategy is formed, rather than formulated, by several actors and their actions. In addition, as a consequence of subsidiary duality, outcomes are not limited to how strategic initiatives turn out, but also to the local institutional context itself.
