Not Walking the Talk? How Host Country Cultural Orientations May Buffer the Damage of Corporate Values’ Misalignment in Multinational Corporations

We argue that a perceived misalignment between a multinational corporation's espoused values and how those values are lived in the subsidiary has detrimental effects on group outcomes, specifically groups’ affective organizational commitment. Using data from 1760 work groups in the foreign subsidiaries of a large European MNC, we find support to our hypotheses and show that when there is a misalignment between a particular espoused value and the lived value, and the value at stake is central to the value system of the country in which the subsidiary is located, the detrimental effect on the group's outcomes is more pronounced.