Subsidiary managers' initiative pursuit: A behavioral agency model
基于行为代理理论，研究子公司经理在创新产品引入中主动追求的影响因素，通过799名受访者的选择实验发现，经理能力、公司创业导向和实施情境共同影响其决策。
Subsidiary managers' decisions to pursue initiatives for innovative product introductions in their host markets provide opportunities for rent creation, but also bear risks for the multinational corporation (MNC). However, we lack insights into which factors drive such decisions. Grounded in behavioral agency theory, our study investigates which factors at the individual level, the corporate level, and the subsidiary's implementation context increase subsidiary managers' likelihood of initiative pursuit. We propose that an individual manager's capability and the MNC's entrepreneurial orientation serve as reference points in a specific implementation context. Based on a stated-choice experiment with 799 respondents, results show that subsidiary managers' likelihood to pursue an innovation initiative varies depending on the context, and the choice of implementation mode activates subsidiary managers' gain frames. Our findings advance theory by providing granularity on the situational complexity across multiple methodological levels that instigate subsidiary managers' initiative pursuit.