Corporate Parenting Styles in the Global Economy

Abstract

The paper provides a summary of the existing typologies of corporate parenting styles and discovers the missing elements in the theoretical constructs. New theoretical constructs fill the gaps. The paper presents a new typology of corporate parenting style by combining “adding value to subsidiaries by their corporate parent(s)” and “extracting value from subsidiaries by their corporate parent(s).” The four-type typology of corporate styles outlines the different levels of value addition and value extraction and various degree of reciprocity of both processes. This paper determines the most important factors that affect the selection of corporate parenting styles. It postulates that the multinational corporation should simultaneously exhibit different parenting styles towards their subsidiaries and should be ready to swiftly amend their parenting styles to reflect the changes in a subsidiary’s strategy and its motives for corporate ownership.