This paper aims to explore the condition under which a multinational company’s organizational headquarters influences its development of a localized overseas product.
Drawing on interviews with members at a Japanese multinational company’s headquarters, the authors’ analysis shows two invisible bottlenecks in the headquarters organization: the psychological resistance of the headquarters’ engineers and a lack of communication channels between the headquarters and overseas units.
The authors’ analysis shows two invisible bottlenecks in the headquarters organization: the psychological resistance of the headquarters’ engineers and a lack of communication channels between the headquarters and overseas units.
The authors’ research provides a rare glimpse into the ways that the conditions of local knowledge and foreign subsidiaries and the organizational conditions of home country headquarters are intertwined with one another during a period of product development.
