Regional Headquarters Capabilities as Key Facilitator of the Coordination of Transnational Business Activities

Transnational corporations (TNCs) recently face a dilemma: they coevally have to exploit global-based as well as locally enrooted business opportunities ('glocal dilemma'). This brings the aspect of formal and informal coordination to an issue. In our conceptual paper we focus on formal coordination and employ a capability-based perspective to address the specific coordination role regional headquarters (RHQ) as structural coordination tool play in this context. Based on a framework borrowed from entrepreneurship theory, we outline necessary capabilities of RHQs to be able to carry out their coordinative function in a sufficient way. Our paper enhances existing knowledge by highlighting the up to now widely disregarded coordinative power of RHQ structures subject to specific competences.