Sowing the seeds of subsidiary influence: Social navigating and political maneuvering of subsidiary actors

This paper emphasizes the socialand political dimensions of subsidiary influence in strate-gically repositioning the subsidiary's mandate. The spe-cific skills subsidiary actors deploy in attempting toinfluence corporate headquarters have largely beenneglected in existing literature. Drawing from a micro-political perspective, we provide a more nuanced, fine-grained understanding of subsidiary influence by illumi-nating how influence is augmented and enriched throughthe concomitant effects of subsidiary actors' social andpolitical skills. Using a multiple case study analysis anddrawing on qualitative interviews, we illustrate how sub-sidiary actors' social skills are used to continuously create,maintain, and develop spaces of social engagement withcorporate decision makers, whereas political skill involvesthe ability to leverage social spaces by developing specificinfluence tactics such as targeting, showcasing, andframing.