Issue Date:  Third Quarter 1993     
Pages:  419-448 
 
 

Selected as the Eldridge Haynes prize winner by the Academy of International Business and the Eldridge Haynes Memorial Trust of Business International  
This study addresses one of the most compelling questions in the field of international management: How can a multinational simultaneously pursue the double-ended objective of effectively conceiving and executing its worldwide strategy?  Here the authors examine the ways in which the dynamics of the strategy-making process between head office and subsidiary units influence the multinational's ability to achieve these two objectives.  Specifically, the authors introduce the concept of procedural justice, the intellectual root of which is grounded in social psychology and law, into international management and explore the impact of process fairness on the multinational's ability to conceive and execute effective worldwide strategies.  The results of this research are based on a two-phase longitudinal study of the decisionmaking dynamics of nineteen multinationals.  They provide support that the exercise of procedural justice is indeed a powerful way to organize the multinationals' strategy-making process.  Procedural justice was found to significantly augment multinationals' ability to achieve this double-ended objective.