sources with internal centres of excellence wherever they may be located’
(Bartlett and Ghoshal, 2000: 710).
Geographic subsidiary managementEffective geographic subsidiary management involves first and foremost multina-
tional responsiveness, responding to the needs of national customers and satisfy-
ing the demands of host country governments. However, it also demands the
defence of a company’s position against global competitors and the leveraging of
local resources and capabilities. The geographic subsidiary manager’s very com-
plex task can be divided into three main roles: as bicultural interpreter, national
defender and advocate, and frontline implementer of corporate strategy. In the
first role, bicultural interpreter, the geographic subsidiary (or country) manager
must not only understand the demands of the local customers, competitors and
government, but also interpret this information and communicate it effectively to
managers at headquarters who might not understand its importance. The coun-
try manager must also act in the opposite direction, interpreting the company’s
overall goals, strategies and values in such a way that they become meaningful to
local employees and do not compromise local cultural norms. As a national
defender and advocate, the country manager should try to counterbalance exces-
sive centralizing pressures from global business managers and make sure that the
interests of the local subsidiary are taken into consideration. The country man-
ager’s role as a frontline implementer of corporate strategy is an especially difficult
one. He or she is pressured by local governments, unions and customers on the
one hand and constrained by a global strategy that often leaves little room for
manoeuvre on the other. This manager’s actions ‘must be sensitive enough to
respect the limits of the diverse local constituencies, pragmatic enough to achieve
the expected corporate outcome, and creative enough to balance the diverse inter-
nal and external demands and constraints’ (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 2000: 713).
Top-level corporate managementTop-level corporate management has to take all the transnational challenges
(efficiency, learning and responsiveness) into account. This means not only
creating different management groups and giving them specific roles and
responsibilities, but also continuously striving to maintain the ‘organizational
legitimacy’ of each group. Balancing and integrating diverse and often con-
flicting interests is the key challenge for top-level corporate management. In
doing so, there are three basic roles to fulfil: those of providing direction and
purpose, leveraging corporate performance and ensuring continual renewal. A
multidimensional and heterogeneous company runs the risk of falling apart if
there is no common vision or shared set of values to lead it towards common
goals. It is the task of top-level corporate management in its role as provider of
direction and purpose to create this common vision. This is, however, a rather
International HRM 81