Navigating identity duality in multinational subsidiaries: A paradox lens on identity claims at Hindustan Unilever 1959-2015

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pant, Anirvan; Ramachandran, J.
• 署名单位: Indian Institute of Management (IIM System); Indian Institute of Management Calcutta; Indian Institute of Management (IIM System); Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Indian Institute of Management (IIM System); Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Indian Institute of Management (IIM System); Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/s41267-017-0076-x
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 664-692
• 关键词: MANAGERIAL COGNITION; History in international business; subsidiary development; expansion; and growth; INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT; ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY; PARADOX

摘要

Multinational subsidiaries do not merely seek legitimacy within their dual institutional contexts; they also strive to articulate an organizational identity by drawing on institutional resources embedded in these dual contexts. We draw attention to the subsidiary's identity duality and conceptualize it as a paradox, i.e., as the juxtaposition of the contradictory, interdependent, and persistent characteristics of the 'global' and the 'local' in the subsidiary's identity. Using 57 years of archival data from Hindustan Unilever, the Indian subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, we observe changing patterns in the articulation of identity claims by subsidiary leaders and develop a process model of how subsidiaries navigate identity duality over time. We find that subsidiary leaders may use two modes of organizational identity work for this purpose - logic ordering (the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by privileging one and subordinating the other) and logic bridging (the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by effecting a Janusian integration of the said demands). Over time, and employing these modes of identity work, leaders at Hindustan Unilever sustained a dynamic balance between the dual cores of the subsidiary's espoused identity.