Organizational tension in international R&D management: the case of Japanese firms

摘要

Internationalization of R&D has unleashed a considerable degree of tension within multinational corporations. This paper explores the nature of such a tension in the Japanese multinational firms. At first Glance, the most obvious tension appeared to be on the autonomy and control issue between the headquarters and overseas laboratories. However, taking perception gaps as the primary manifestation of organizational tension within a firm, we learned that the tension appears to be more salient in information-sharing issues than in autonomy-control issues, and that the local side seems more dissatisfied with the current level of information sharing and granted autonomy than the parent side.