Change Management in MNCs: How Global Convergence Intertwines with National Diversities

Abstract

This article presents case studies of three of the four global players in the lifts and escalator industry (controlling three-quarters of the respective world market). It is based on chiefly qualitative data from headquarters level (based in the US, Finland and Germany) and comparative data from their British and German subsidiaries. The object of the research is change management processes in the work systems at subsidiary level. The central research question of the study is to analyse how these processes are shaped by globalization on the one hand and national institutional contexts on the other hand. In doing so, the authors position their research between the two dominant families of approaches in international business research, recently characterized by Child as ‘low-context’ and ‘high-context’ approaches. The study is process- (rather than structure-) oriented and shows how global and national effects shape the design of the work systems at the subsidiary level and reveals that there is no one best way of globalizing in MNCs. The analysis in this article focuses on the cross-national comparison of the subsidiaries, but at the same time highlights the relevance of the societal institutions of MNCs’ home countries as well.

Keywords: Anglo-German comparison, change management in MNCs, national institutions