Organizational recipes and Management Practice in Multinational Corporations

Abstract

In this paper we explore potential factors explaining how organizational recipes are spread within Multinational Companies. Implementation of organizational recipes has become a widespread phenomenon, but most current research have focused on diffusion between companies and not within companies. We distinguish between formal adoption and putting a recipe to use, i.e. whether the concept leads to changes in work processes and management practice. We develop a number of propositions, where we aim to explain spreading by the following factors: i) Role of the corporate center as a change agent, ii) Recipient units’ previous experience with organizational concepts, and iii) National culture of recipient units.