Subsidiary Types, Activities, and Location: An Empirical Investigation

effect, what this process literature indicated is the evolution of subsidiary roles (as an outcome ofthe MNC’s international evolution) (Malnight, 1995, 1996). As with the strategy perspective, theprocess perspective also implied that subsidiary roles are developed as an outcome of theevolution of the MNC’s international operations, once again leading to second-order effects forsubsidiary roles.A number of empirical studies have tried to verify these typologies. Much of the work that hasbeen done has used a top-down approach, motivated by theory, to identifying subsidiary roles.The typical empirical study would attempt to validate a particular typology or a general typologyinduced from literature or a typology generated along some important strategic and organizationaldimensions. Harzing (2000), Leong and Tan (1993) attempt to verify the Bartlett and Ghoshal(1986) typology. Roth and Morrison (1990) explored the Prahalad and Doz (1987) framework toidentify subsidiaries either focusing on global integration, local responsiveness, or pursuing amultifocal existence. Others such as Birkinshaw and Morrison (1995) induce typologies fromliterature. Further, researchers have offered subsidiary typologies based on different dimensionsconsidered to be relevant in discriminating subsidiaries. These dimensions have ranged fromgeographic and product scope of the subsidiary mandate (White & Poynter, 1984), subsidiary’sposition in the integration-responsiveness framework (Jarillo & Martinez, 1990; Roth &Morrison, 1990; Taggart, 1998), subsidiary’s position with respect to resource flows (Randoy &Li, 1998), subsidiary autonomy and decision making (Taggart, 1997), or inflows and outflows ofknowledge at the subsidiary level (Gupta & Govindarajan, 1991) (see Paterson & Brock, 2002 fora review, and Table 1 for a summary).TABLE 1 GOES ABOUT HERE5