현지 시장의 전략적 중요성과 해외 자회사의 역량이 자회사 성과에미치는 영향: 집권화의 조절효과를 중심으로

This study examines the effects of the strategic importance of local environment and the level of local resources and capabilities on the performance of the foreign subsidiaries with the focus on the moderating effect of centralization. This study makes empirical analysis using the previous study on the roles of subsidiaries from Bartlett and Ghoshal. the classification of roles of subsidiaries from Bartlett and Ghoshal is composed of the strategic importance of local environment and the level of local resources and capabilities. This study analyzed a sample of 144 subsidiaries of multinational corporations from Korea in China. This results of empirical analysis are as follows. First, the strategic importance of local environment has positive effect on the performance of subsidiaries. This result shows that subsidiaries can achieve high performance through making sustained efforts enough to obtain competitive advantages where multinational corporation consider its local market strategically important. Second, the level of local resources and capabilities has positive effect on the performance of subsidiaries. This result is consistent with those of previous studies. This result shows that internal resources and capabilities of the subsidiaries have positive impact on the performance of the subsidiaries because they play major roles of sources of competitive advantage. The moderating effects of centralization are as follows. Centralization of headquarter has a U-shaped moderating effect between strategic importance of local environment and performance of the subsidiaries. This result indicates that the centralization of headquarter could reduce the autonomy of subsidiaries and then subsidiaries might not make rapid and direct response on local market whereas the strategic importance of local environment requires more rapid decision of local responsiveness. Therefore, centralization would weaken the performance of subsidiaries as the strategic importance of local environment increases. Nevertheless, when the strategic importance of local environment is very high, the centralization of headquarter would provide subsidiaries ample and sufficient knowledge for local market and then subsidiaries could make more effective responsiveness on the local market. As a result, centralization raises the performance of the subsidiaries as the strategic importance of local environment increases. In addition, the level of centralization negatively moderates the relationship between the level of local resources and capabilities and the performance of subsidiaries. This result shows that autonomous decision-making of subsidiary is more efficient when its own local resources and capabilities are outstanding and excellent. However, the excessive centralization of headquarter would not be helpful for autonomous decision-making of subsidiaries and even hinder the right and quick decision of subsidiaries. Therefore, it decrease the performance of the subsidiaries as local resources and capabilities of subsidiaries are reinforced. This study provides useful theoretical and practical implications in that the level of centralization of headquarter should be carefully chosen according to the strategic importance of local environment and the level of local resources and capabilities. In other words, this findings provides possible explanation how centralization affects the relationship among the strategic importance of local environment, the level of local resources and capabilities, and the performance of subsidiaries.