An Organizational Politics Perspective on Intra-firm Competition in Multinational Corporations

Reviewing the International Business (IB) literature on intra-firm competition as well as the more extensive literature on subsidiary mandate change, the paper uncovers that both literature streams so far pay rather little systematic attention to the political dimension of intra-firm competition. Taking a micro-political perspective, an alternative framework is developed that helps to identify key actors, their behavioral rationales and the contextual conditions that inform such rationales in intra-firm competition. Specifically, we argue that subsidiary managers’ ability to mobilize resources (based on their resource exchange relationships) within and outside the multinational corporation (MNC) and their willingness to employ these in favor of the subsidiary (based on their strategic orientation) form an important strategic asset in intra-firm competition. Further, we argue that the subsidiary manager’s resource exchange relationships and their strategic orientation—in combination understood as different resource mobilization strategies—are informed by their career path, position and aspiration.