From Hierarchical Leadership Toward Inclusive Networks: Imagined Structures of Future Multinational Corporations

This chapter argues that the local market conditions in which multinational corporations (MNCs) are embedded affect their global activities to an extent where the two are intricately bound together through many analogous, irreversible, and mutually interdependent relationships. This questions whether MNC leadership based on hierarchical organizational relationships should be reoriented toward more decentralized, inclusive relationships within and around the organization to better accommodate internal and outside stakeholders in networked modes of collaboration. This discussion follows an emic approach that considers whether the beliefs, values, and practices of individuals in and around MNCs, who live and operate in local market contexts, can improve the way MNC leaders, managers, and employees located throughout the world can work together and resolve major organizational issues. Such an approach moves the organization away from vertical management controls toward a flatter, more decentralized, and networked organizational structure. Based on phenomenological philosophy, it is argued that new strategic narratives grounded in this approach can engage both headquarters managers and local employees in a new responsive organizational dynamic. Accordingly, corporate leaders and employees dispersed across different multinational locations should navigate the global business environment based on interacting semiotic webs of strategies developed to counter the constantly changing market conditions.