Social networks of foreign subsidiary managers as industrial coordination

The purpose of this paper is: (1) to review the assumptions of the interaction and industrial network approaches on industrial coordination, (2) to examine the role of subsidiary managers in industrial inter-firm relationships, and (3) to synthesize previous conceptualisations of the multinational as both an intra- and inter-organizational network, particularly within the ldquoprocess schoolrdquo of diversified multinationals. As a corollary of these tasks and of a study of eleven industrial Portuguese subsidiaries of Finnish multinationals, the paper suggests theoretical propositions on social networks of foreign subsidiary managers as a mechanism of coordination in industrial markets. In the final section, some managerial implications are outlined.