I am in the process of choosing a topic for my thesis and want to investigate organisational structures in MNE's. I am thinking about investigating and comparing the participation between MNEs with different organisational structure and the effect it has on subsidiary performance. I want to do qualitative research but I am not sure whether to do a single study approach or multi case study approach. Any suggestions/feedback on a research questions and potential sub questions to submit for my proposal?
It depends on if you are focusing on cultural differences or the organizational structure. Will you be looking at multinational companies in the same industry (strongly recommend you do so that there is less complexity in your analysis), subsidiaries in the same countries or different countries, and with the same level of overall business success (demographics for the company)?
I found it easier to start with a general question and how you will qualify it. For example, in my dissertation, I wanted to know the effect that each level of the organizational structure had on knowledge creation in groups for distributed groups (my original intent was multinational groups). I decided the best way for me to measure this (it was qualitative but I still had to determine the group knowledge development) was to look at the group writing process for the group's documents.
How will define/measure "effect"? Are you looking for the cultural differences? Are you looking for efficiency? Are you looking at organizational structures at the local level? Are you looking at how local and home offices interact? Depending on that, how will you find that information?
I would suggest you may take a multi case study approach as diversity can provide a whole myriad of data sets to make your meta-analysis more complete. Also, recently I remembered a quotation from a MOOC training session in which they imply the following sentence: “From global significance to hopelessly-local operated". In a nutshell, we must think of a different way, -radical and disruptive-, concerning MNE’s international business and management to counteract the effect of the eternal battle: Standardizing versus adapting. Add up salt & pepper: Check & balance.
If you are doing a master thesis the resources are often limited in terms of time and access to companies. I think this is an important perspective to have in mind in answering your question as you need a project which is in it self feasible.
Therefore, if you would like to look at performance, I would go for a quantitative approach and for sure include several MNEs thinking carefully about the selection criteria as also mentioned by Virginia Yonkers. In the way that you write, I think is sounds much like a quant approach.
If you, however, would like to stick to a qualitative approach, you may both go for a single or a multiple case study. From the perspective of feasibility in a short time frame, I would suggest my own students to go for one MNE and look at several subsidiaries within this MNE. It requires interview observations in headquarters and in subsidiaries if you want to make a transitional qualitative study - which I think would be super interesting. There are studies on institutional distance that might inspire you or some regarding transferal of practices - which would be achieved to a variegating degree of success for different subsidiaries. Good luck with your master thesis Rebecca Murphy
You may refer to the following article:
- Amanda Bullough, Fiona Moore and Tugba Kalafatoglu (2017) Research on women in international business and management: then, now, and next, Cross Cultural & Strategic Management Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 211-230. DOI 10.1108/CCSM-02-2017-0011
For me, I think the multi case study approach. Because you can see a variety of things. learning Comparisons are born into new knowledge.
Thank you everyone who replied and provided suggestions. After further research, I stumbled across de-internationalization which I have decided to base my thesis on instead. Due to COVID-19 and Brexit I believe this is a relative topic to study. I do want to take qualitative research and do a multi case study approach.
I have framed my research questions to be the following:
Benefits/downsides of de-internationalization?
What are the implications of de-internationalization on the firm’s business model?
Which parts of the firm’s business model are affected most, how and why by de-internationalization?
Any suggestions on what kind of industry to investigate?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Thesis Research