Divergent Glocalization in a Multinational Enterprise. Strategies and Structures in European and US Subsidiaries Facing the Late-2000 Recession

Glocalization, the blending of global and local cultural elements, has mainly been interpreted as an in-between process, compromising between homogenous global standards and heterogeneous local traditions. Investigating from 2005 to 2010 the institutional multiplicity of strategies and structures in a MNE, we found that glocalization can also unfold as a beyond process leading to divergent outcomes, outside the poles of an imagined local-global continuum. We studied the mechanisms that accounted for the process of blending strategies and structures before and during the late-2000 financial crisis. We discuss the role of sensemaking and sensegiving, internally and externally demanded rationalization, identity work and the political prisms generated by multiple corporate governance traditions. We found that the merging of firms under the same holding did not lead to homogenization, but to strengthened local identities under a common transnational umbrella. Moreover, the surviving challenge posed by the crisis was dealt with in local path-dependent ways, even under the direction of the same top management team, resulting in the stability of societal arrangements, but also in complex patterns of divergence and convergence of strategies and structures. We draw implications for studies of globalization, international business and institutional theory.