Getting the seal of approval: Pathways to subsidiary initiative acceptance

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are proactive, entrepreneurial, and decentralized organizations. They seek to incorporate and leverage knowledge from their foreign subsidiaries. Initiatives in which subsidiaries pursue new business opportunities are one way that subsidiaries contribute to MNCs' knowledge stocks, but prior research suggests that few subsidiary initiatives secure headquarters approval. We argue that the extent to which initiatives are accepted by the headquarters of an MNC depends on a range of relational and contextual conditions that configure in complex ways. Using a neoconfigurational approach, we identify five equifinal configurations associated with the acceptance of subsidiary initiatives. We advance theory of subsidiary management by uncovering how subsidiary activities gain traction within the MNC.