Local subsidiaries initiatives: cultural determinants and outcomes

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cultural determinants of local subsidiaries' initiatives. An exploratory and qualitative research, conducted in a Polish subsidiary in the telecommunication sector, indicated that the entrepreneurial culture of the subsidiary is not the unique cultural factor affecting local initiatives, as mentioned by several researches on this subject. Two main contributions emerge from this study. First, the corporate culture (for the multinational corporation), business culture and national culture are considered as barriers to local subsidiaries' initiatives. Second, these factors enhance subsidiaries capabilities and isolation while preventing the transformation of local initiatives into hybrid and/or internal ones. The implication is that this paper provides researchers and practitioners with an overview of the main cultural factors to take into consideration in order to exploit local subsidiaries' initiatives by the whole multinational corporation.