Transnational Management in a Disruptive World: Exploiting Business Opportunities Through Planning and Interactive Controls

The global business environment is increasingly characterized by abrupt events and uncertain conditions that require responsive approaches by multinational corporations (MNCs). The concept of transnational strategy has influenced our thinking about effective adaptive strategy-making in international business, although the effectiveness of these approaches remains understudied. Part of the reason derives from the complexity of consistent descriptions and conceptualizations of the underlying transnational structures. By combining strategic organization, international business and management control perspectives, we attempt to specify a discernible transnational configuration to show how implicit response capabilities can enhance the ability to identify business opportunities in rapidly changing environments and exploit their upside potential for economic gains. The adoption of interactive strategic control processes can facilitate the simultaneous engagement of insights from decentralized initiatives in local markets with central analytical deliberations at the corporate headquarters to arrive at better strategic solutions that enhance the performance of MNCs operating in complex and dynamic market contexts. This chapter presents the origins of the theoretical rationales for transnational management and discusses associated leadership approaches for its effective implementation.