The Corporate Headquarters in the Contemporary Corporation: What do we know and what should we know about it?

Abstract

The panel symposium turns spotlight on the corporate headquarters (CHQ), which is the contemporary corporation’s central organizational unit. Knowledge about the CHQ is critical to understand the functioning and governance of modern organizations. The starting point of the symposium is a comprehensive review of the existing knowledge about the corporate headquarters, which is published in the 2015 volume of the Academy of Management Annals (cf. Menz, Kunisch, & Collis, 2015). In the article, we draw on the multibusiness firm and multinational firm literatures to advance a multimarket firm perspective on the CHQ. Based on this integrative perspective, we identify several fundamental inquiries for future research. To discuss these inquiries, we invited distinguished scholars to the panel symposium. We hope that the symposium provides scholars across multiple AOM divisions with ideas and guidance for their future research.