International Coordination

Since the 1980s, scholars in international strategic management have been concerned with how multinational companies (MNCs) coordinate the increasing number of their dispersed but interdependent international activities. International coordination is defined as the organization of the different units and employees of an MNC to enable them to work together effectively. International coordination ensures reciprocal predictability of action among interdependent—geographically dispersed—units. The efforts to achieve coordination increase with the complexity of the interdependence. Given the especial complexity of establishing and maintaining interdependences in international operations, it is not surprising that the choice of which specific coordinating mechanisms to implement, and how and when, have become a major focus in work on MNCs. Coordinating mechanisms include aspects of control and communication and generally call into the categories of structural mechanisms, formal mechanisms, and other less formal and more subtle mechanisms like lateral relations and socialization.