Transnational and multi­dimensional organization

A multinational holds product, region, and function in tension, giving national units different roles in one integrated network.

What it is

A transnational organization is a multinational that declines to pick one axis, and its national units play different parts: one subsidiary leads a product worldwide, another contributes a capability, a third implements what others design. A shared perspective and mutual adjustment, more than one chain of command, hold them together.

Grouping, the first of five levels that rest on theory, is two or more bases at once (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989), a contested level: by a single-boss test, our judgment, each unit sits on one basis, since Strikwerda and Stoelhorst (2009) found one manager accountable per dimension, which they say avoids the matrix's two bosses, and Bartlett and Ghoshal (1990) call matrix management a frame of mind. Decision rights are selective vertical and horizontal decentralization, in Mintzberg's (1980) terms, a synthesis offering propositions without a new test. Coordination is by mutual adjustment and standardization of norms. Lateral mechanisms, also contested, stop at integrating and managerial linking roles, short of the matrix, with careers, cross-unit teams, and planning doing the integrating (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1990; Strikwerda and Stoelhorst 2009; Galbraith 2010). Differentiation is high, integration heavy. Donaldson and Joffe (2014), a practitioner article on fit, read both levels the other way: the transnational strategy is fitted by geographies matrixed with functions, or with product divisions where products are diverse, and by high levels of at least one of centralization, formalization, and shared values.

The rest is our reading. Specialization spans medium to high. Formalization is medium and centralization spans mixed to decentralized, though Ghoshal and Nohria (1989), a survey of 618 headquarters-subsidiary relations in 66 multinationals, found both set differently for each subsidiary context, so the placement leaves out the hierarchical relations. Layers are moderate. Exchange spans bureaucracy to clan (after Ouchi 1980, conceptual), and the boundary selective to permeable: national borders are crossed routinely (Ashkenas and colleagues 1995), the firm's own edge not necessarily.

Where it came from

C. K. Prahalad and Yves Doz, in The Multinational Mission (1987), framed the multinational's task as two demands at once, global integration of activities and local responsiveness, after Doz, Bartlett, and Prahalad (1981) examined conflicts between global competitive pressures and host country demands. Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal named the organizational answer: their 1988 article called the transnational an integrated network of worldwide operations that achieves global coordination and national flexibility together. Managing Across Borders (1989) rests on case studies of nine multinational companies in three industries. The problem was how a multinational could be globally efficient, locally responsive, and able to learn worldwide at once.

The form grew up in the multinational corporation. An earlier line of multinational structure research runs from Stopford and Wells (1972), a study of 187 U.S. multinational enterprises, who traced structure in stages from an international division to area or worldwide product divisions or a mix; Egelhoff (1988), a multi-firm study of 34 large US and European multinationals, found some of its relationships supported and others not, and Qiu and Donaldson (2012), a preliminary test on German multinationals, put corporate integration in place of foreign product diversification.

Where it fits

Our judgment sets eight cells, theory two, and evidence two, both contested.

• Size. Strain small, partial medium, fits large, from theory: Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) and Prahalad and Doz (1987) write about large multinationals. Rugman and Verbeke (2004), an archival study of 380 of the largest multinationals, found most selling mainly in their home region.
• Age. Contested judgment. Bartlett and Ghoshal with Ghoshal and Nohria: partial young, fits established and old, since the network is built from established subsidiaries. Hannan and Freeman (1984): inertia rises with age, and attempts at reorganization raise death rates, so partial at old.
• Environmental uncertainty. Partial stable, fits shifting and unpredictable, judgment on Bartlett and Ghoshal and Galbraith (1973).
• Environmental complexity. Partial simple and moderate, fits complex, judgment; the nearest premise is Malnight (2001), a longitudinal comparison of two pharmaceutical multinationals that differentiated structure process by process.
• Munificence and hostility. Strain hostile, partial elsewhere, judgment on Burton and Obel (2004): the strain rests on their push to simplify under hostility, which cuts this form's lateral flows. The hostile level spans their high hostility, where they lower centralization for speed, and their extreme, where they raise it.
• Diversity. Partial single business, fits related, strain unrelated, judgment; the premises are Bartlett and Ghoshal's (1989) network, which needs businesses with something to share, and Qiu and Donaldson (2012), who studied matrices, not the transnational.
• Strategy. Fits analyzer, partial defender and prospector, judgment on Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) and the exploration and exploitation space of Burton, Obel, and Håkonsson (2020): seeking efficiency, responsiveness, and learning at once is closest to the analyzer's mix.
• Technology and knowledge intensity. Partial throughout, judgment: the form answers cross-border integration and responsiveness pressures (Prahalad and Doz 1987; Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989), which neither routineness nor training levels decides.
• Interdependence. Partial pooled and sequential, fits reciprocal, from theory (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989; Thompson 1967): units trading resources and knowledge need it; units sharing only capital do not.
• Global integration pressure. Contested, evidence. View one (Bartlett and Ghoshal; Prahalad and Doz; Harzing 2000): strain low, partial moderate, fits high. View two (Devinney, Midgley, and Venaik 2000, a formal model with no new data; Meyer and Su 2015, a survey of subsidiaries in two emerging economies; Leong and Tan 1993): strain low, partial moderate and high, since firms can meet the pressures in many configurations.
• Local responsiveness pressure. Contested, evidence, the same two views at the same levels.

What it does well

It fits headquarters to each subsidiary. Ghoshal and Nohria (1989) found four subsidiary contexts, each governed by a fitting mix of centralization, formalization, and normative integration: hierarchical, federative, clan, and integrative. Nohria and Ghoshal (1994), a quantitative study of multinationals, found that the more a firm differentiated those structures to fit each context, the better it performed, that shared values also helped, and that firms doing both did best. Zhou (2015), an archival study of many US multinationals over 13 years, found supervision differentiated too: foreign units more often supervised subsidiaries in countries with weaker institutions.

The explorer offers it for countries that each reinvent everything and for head-office products that do not fit local markets (Prahalad and Doz 1987; Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989); a second view (Leong and Tan 1993; Devinney and colleagues 2000; Meyer and Su 2015) drops it from both, leaving the matrix for the first and divisional by region for the second.

What it costs

In our reading, the plain cost is management attention on unlike relationships: the center must know each subsidiary's context, set a different mix of controls for each, and keep shared values alive across them.

Lunnan and colleagues (2019), a survey of 104 subsidiary managers in two multinationals, found that distance raised bargaining costs; that centralization and formalization cut information costs; and that social integration, against the authors' hypothesis, raised bargaining costs.

How it fails

Building a network the business does not need. Where little must be integrated or adapted, the lateral machinery costs more than it returns: coordination overhead overrun. Rugman and Verbeke (2004) found most large multinationals regional in their sales, and Devinney and colleagues (2000) argue other configurations can meet the same pressures. The link is our reading.

Headquarters runs every subsidiary the same way. One model of control for every context means the center's picture of what it governs is wrong: model and world divergence. This is the converse of Ghoshal and Nohria's findings, our reading, not a failure they observed.

Product and region heads fight over the same decisions. Where the form runs as a product-by-region matrix, two lines claim one call, a consensus split. Wolf and Egelhoff (2013), a survey of 82 German multinationals, found more conflict than in single-dimension structures only in matrices crossing products with regions.

Know-how stays where the reporting line puts it. Asakawa (2020), an empirical comparison of R&D subsidiaries across multinationals, found knowledge sharing associated with which part of headquarters a subsidiary reported to; the siloing is our reading, since the study shows associations, not effects.

At the decentralized end of the centralization span, two misfit rules fire, both Burton and Obel (2004) propositions, not tested results: authority spread wide in a defender, whose advantage is tight control of one stable operation, and in an analyzer that does not innovate, whose core loses central control. The defender rule is contested, since Mintzberg (1980) places the decentralized professional bureaucracy in complex but stable environments, so it can at most flag the form; the analyzer rule is undisputed but meets the form only through level 3, the decentralized end of a centralization span that is our judgment, so it too flags the form without sinking it; the fit table counts the analyzer a fit. Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, tested an earlier model's rules only as a set: any misfit went with lower return on assets. One factor paired with one structure is the interaction form of fit, which Drazin and Van de Ven (1985), a quantitative study of 629 work units, found unsupported. Volberda and colleagues (2012), a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies, found that firms in quasi fit gain from improving either fit but firms with perfect institutional fit slightly lose performance striving for contingency fit, so a firing rule does not show that moving toward fit helps a firm its field treats as legitimate; and Pennings (1975), a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model, found that environment-structure fit did not explain effectiveness, a failure Donaldson (2001) lays to method.

What the research found

Leong and Tan (1993), a survey of 131 senior executives who classified their own firms, found partial support for the typology Bartlett and Ghoshal built from their nine cases: transnationals were the least often reported type, and the practices hypothesized for the international and transnational types matched worse than those for the multinational and global types. Harzing (2000), a survey of 166 subsidiaries of 37 multinationals, tested a three-type typology from the literature, without the international type; clusters matching the three emerged and differed significantly in interdependence and local responsiveness.

Whether the form performs better is disputed. Devinney, Midgley, and Venaik (2000) argue that firms can configure themselves in a variety of ways rather than the transnational being optimal, and that average-based methods may explain the missing link between form and performance. Venaik, Midgley, and Devinney (2005), a survey of subsidiary managers, found one path to subsidiary performance through networking and inter-unit learning and another through autonomy and innovation, holding only with environmental controls. In Meyer and Su's (2015) survey the transnational strategy enhanced subsidiary performance in particular under three subsidiary conditions, a finding about subsidiary strategy, not the parent's structure.

Of the most recent studies, from 2020, the strongest is a meta-analysis of 94 studies covering 23,337 foreign subsidiaries (Geleilate, Andrews, and Fainshmidt 2020): autonomy may improve subsidiary performance in some contexts, moderated by institutional and industry context and the headquarters-subsidiary relationship. The abstract gives no pooled effect.

Where the form runs through a matrix: Wolf and Egelhoff (2002), a statistical study of 95 German firms, found general support for the traditional fits, as association, not a performance effect, and Egelhoff, Wolf, and Adzic (2013), a survey of 57 German multinationals that use a matrix, found the information-processing hypotheses supported. Habib and Victor (1991), a multi-firm study of 144 US multinationals, found structures matched to strategy but no fit effect on performance among service firms and mixed effects among manufacturers. Hall and Saias (1980, ungraded here) dissent from the strategy-structure school: strategy, structure, and environment are closely linked, and structure later constrains strategic choice.

The evidence ledger holds 21 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

ABB (Asea Brown Boveri), its relays business area, as Christopher Bartlett describes it in a Harvard Business School teaching case (1993), one case study. Bartlett coauthored Managing Across Borders, so the case comes from one of the form's authors.

What the organization did: ABB developed and ran its relays business area inside its global matrix organization. The case follows three levels of management and what each was responsible for. It shows how ABB built a structure and a management process meant to unify operations dispersed across many countries while keeping its frontline units entrepreneurial.

What happened, and what the source concluded: the case description presents ABB's structure and management process as highly successful in integrating disparate worldwide operations while keeping a highly entrepreneurial front line. That is the case writer's framing, from the publisher's description; the case text and teaching note were not read.

A teaching case is written for discussion, not to test a form. Its title and the publisher's description call ABB's structure a global matrix, and nothing read shows headquarters relations varying by subsidiary, the form's distinguishing move; that bears on the grouping dispute over whether the form gives managers two bosses or one manager per dimension.

Source: Bartlett 1993. ABB's relays business: building and managing a global matrix, Harvard Business School case 394-016 (25 pages).

Variants and near relatives

Heterarchy. Hedlund's (1986) hypermodern multinational has many centers of different kinds, written against the matrix. Its integration is primarily normative, other controls secondary, where the transnational also fits centralization and formalization to each subsidiary (Ghoshal and Nohria 1989); the hypertext entry teaches his later N-form.

Metanational. Doz, Santos, and Williamson (2001): a global company that senses new knowledge worldwide and uses it to out-innovate competitors; in our reading, from a book brief only, it puts worldwide sensing first where the transnational balances three aims.

Multidimensional and reconfigurable organization. Strikwerda and Stoelhorst (2009), interviews at 36 Dutch organizations and five case studies, found seven organized around several dimensions, each with its own accountable manager; nothing there concerns national units' differentiated roles. Galbraith (2010) adds geography, market segments, channels, and solutions to function and product, uses front-back designs, and reconfigures by assembling and disassembling teams. Galbraith's (2002) reconfigurable single business is taught under adhocracy's Platform organization (Ciborra), its internal prices under internal-market. The variant is not Ackoff's multidimensional organization, under internal-market.

Multinational, international, and global types. Bartlett and Ghoshal define it against these types: the multinational type is the divisional by region entry's structure, the global type the multidivisional entry's global product division. The international type is a coordinated federation with many assets and decisions decentralized, whose management treats overseas operations as appendages to a central domestic corporation.

The Matrix organization, its nearest neighbor, puts the same people under two lines of authority at once, where the transnational gives different subsidiaries different roles, strategic leader, contributor, or implementer (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989), with headquarters relations fitted to each (Ghoshal and Nohria 1989). The Hybrid structure also gives units different bases, one boss each, as this profile's single-boss reading does; the transnational adds those roles and relations. The corporate center entry's Center of excellence (Frost and colleagues 2002), studied in foreign subsidiaries, is a near relative: one unit whose capabilities the firm means to spread, not a network of differentiated roles. The professional partnership entry's multiplex form (Greenwood and colleagues 2010), the transnational professional service firm, also differentiates on several axes, but in a firm its professionals own and govern.

Moving into or out of it

Malnight (1996), an evolutionary account whose abstract describes no data, argues that established multinationals move from decentralized toward network-based structures in phases. Forsgren, Holm, and Johanson (1995), a quantitative study of divisions in many Swedish firms, found dominant foreign subsidiaries pulling a division's headquarters abroad while corporate headquarters resisted.

Moves can also run from the matrix toward the multidimensional variant, our reading. Worren (2017), one case study, follows FMC Subsea from geography, through global product units added in 2011 that gave some regional managers two bosses, to products separated from regions in 2015, ending dual reporting; the author calls the matrix a transitory form toward a simpler, still multidimensional structure.

Hannan and Freeman (1984) argue that attempts at reorganization raise death rates and reset the liability-of-newness clock; Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993), a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates, find the effects vary by type of change and over time. Running the reorganization belongs to Change & Transformation.

The thinking behind it

C. K. Prahalad and Yves Doz (1981, with Bartlett; 1987): global pressures against host country demands, then integration against responsiveness.

Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal (1989, 1990): the transnational solution, more prescription than test, and matrix management as a frame of mind.

Sumantra Ghoshal and Nitin Nohria (1989, 1994): differentiated fit and shared values, linked to performance in one study whose abstract gives no sample or measure.

Gunnar Hedlund (1986): the heterarchy.

John Stopford and Louis Wells (1972): the stages model of multinational structure, later revised by Egelhoff (1988).

Jay Galbraith (1974, 2010): information processing, and the multidimensional organization. Ocasio's (1997) attention-based view disputes that school: structure channels attention, not only information. Classical writers dissent too, keeping the hierarchy as coordination's backbone.

Hans Strikwerda (2009): one accountable manager per dimension.

Anne-Wil Harzing (2000) and Siew Meng Leong (1993): tests of the typology, Harzing's of three of its four types.

Timothy Devinney, David Midgley, and Sunil Venaik (2000, 2005): the transnational not normatively optimal, the equifinality Gresov and Drazin (1997) describe, and dual paths to subsidiary performance.

Alan Rugman and Alain Verbeke (2004): the regional multinational.

Michael Hannan and John Freeman (1984): structural inertia.

Also called

Transnational corporation and transnational company, in Bartlett and Ghoshal's sense; integrated network (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1988, 1989); multidimensional organization (Strikwerda and Stoelhorst 2009) or multi-dimensional organization (Galbraith 2010); internally differentiated organization, for the multinational in Ghoshal and Nohria (1989); and transnational strategy, the subsidiary-level strategy Meyer and Su (2015) test.

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