Organizational identity, organizational capabilities, and the evolution of the multinational corporation : JTech's transmission systems business in the US

When a multinational corporation (MNC) internationalizes by establishing a new subsidiary, the subsidiary's evolution depends upon its acceptance within its host country environment, by its home country headquarters, by other subsidiaries, and by all other stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, customers, complementary innovators, product market critics and analysts. To be accepted, the subsidiary organization has to have a legitimate form with some combination of properties - such as activities, features, and boundaries - that make it recognizable and understandable as a meaningful social unit. In short, as a social object, the subsidiary has to have an identity that conforms to a recognized and accepted type, so that it is evaluated positively as belonging to a legitimate category of organizations. Yet, if value creation simultaneously depends upon a subsidiary developing organizational capabilities, how does its identity shape the development of those capabilities? How do the capabilities in turn alter the subsidiary's identity? How does the identity-capability relationship influence the subsidiary's strategy, and how do the organizational structures put in place to cope with these changes affect the organization's identity and legitimacy? I explore these issues by analyzing the case of the evolution of a US subsidiary of a Japanese high technology MNC, which had responsibility for activities related to the development and sale of transmission equipment into the US, over a fifteen year period ending in 2000. I find that organizational members constructed an identity for their organization through which they enacted their environment, organizational capabilities, strategy, and structure.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Voisey, Christopher John

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• D. Eleanor Westney.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40888

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40888