Understanding Agency Problems in Headquarters-Subsidiary Relationships in Multinational Corporations: A Contextualized Model
提出了一个针对跨国公司总部与子公司关系的代理模型，将总部视为委托人、子公司视为代理人，并考虑自利和有限理性两个根源，通过内部组织和外部社会条件解释子公司层面的差异，有助于组织研究更贴切地应用代理视角。
This paper proposes an agency model for headquarters-subsidiary relationships in multinational organizations with headquarters as the principal and the subsidiary as the agent. As a departure from classical agency theory, our model is developed for the unit level of analysis and considers two root causes of the agency problem—self-interest and bounded rationality. We argue that in the organizational setting, one cannot assume absolute self-interest and perfect rationality of agents (subsidiaries) but should allow them to vary. We explain subsidiary-level variation through a set of internal organizational and external social conditions in which the headquarters-subsidiary agency dyad is embedded. We then discuss several agency scenarios reflecting various levels of self-interest and rationality that lead to different manifestations of the agency problem. The proposed framework can inform more relevant applications of the agency perspective in organizational studies and motivate future research.