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We examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to a sudden transition of political systems in the emerging market of Indonesia. We draw on the political science and nonmarket strategy literature to explain how local subsidiary firms of MNEs ('subsidiaries') adapted their nonmarket strategy during the transformation of Indonesia's political landscape from an autocratic regime (1967-1998) to the current democratic and decentralized system. Based on multiple qualitative case studies of Western European subsidiaries, we found that MNEs adapted their business strategies to relate with multiple layers of government in an environment of rampant corruption. Under Suharto, MNEs sought to develop relations with his regime, while also seeking to avoid informal transaction costs. From 1998, MNEs began to conduct survival strategies by partnering with local firms and leveraging local political networks. Later however MNEs adopted proactive, innovative strategies that replaced corrupt activities, for example, by leveraging government-level partnerships and forming long-term relationships with local communities. These findings suggest that MNEs need active agency and proactive nonmarket strategies to address the negative challenges of unstable political environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When politico-religious audiences perceive the behavior of a multinational enterprise (MNE) as socially harmful, they stigmatize the MNE and threaten its legitimacy. While the negative economic ramifications of stigmatization have been studied, we know less about the process of managing the growing, damaging influence of 'pockets of opposition' and their labeling of MNEs. We fill this gap by investigating how a stigmatized MNE maintains its legitimacy against increasing opposition from stigmatizing audiences, using the case of a century-old subsidiary company of a Dutch beer-brewer in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country, where alcohol consumption is proscribed. We articulate the dynamics of managing core-stigma in this environment and theorize the process of maintaining the MNE's legitimacy when well-supported stigmatizers gain considerable influence and systematic and proactive intervention is required. An important part of this intervention is the way in which our MNE was able to draw on its longstanding knowledge of its industry to craft strategies addressing a major social issue, in turn supporting its legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) manage their legitimacy in extreme institutional environments. Building on the legitimacy-as-process perspective, we investigate the legitimation activities of a century-old local subsidiary of a beer-brewing MNE in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. Drawing on a triangulated dataset that includes a series of interviews with company directors and related market and non-market actors, we present a longitudinal case study of how the subsidiary continued to negotiate its legitimacy and nonmarket influence in an unstable environment where alcohol consumption is proscribed. Based on this case we present a process model that suggests how foreign-owned businesses may maintain legitimacy in extreme institutional environments despite their engagement in 'sinful' products. Our study contributes to the nonmarket strategy literature and notably to research on managing the legitimacy of foreign firms in 'sin' industries. These contributions have implications for political risk management in inherently extreme institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much of family business scholarship has focused on ownership and control, little is known about how formerly family-owned firms that transition into public entities may thrive under family influence. We argue that the "soft" influence of family managers who have sold out of the firm offers insights into how family firms may continue to grow despite the loss of family ownership. "Soft" influence concerns the ways in which family members continue to shape the firm's practices by cultural (namely, customs and values related to the founding family) and cognitive (personality and behavioral) means. Yet soft influence is rarely publicly acknowledged. Soft influence contrasts with "hard" influence based on the family's aggregate shareholding that determines the firm's strategic direction and control. In what way(s) may family members continue to influence the firm that they no longer control? We address this question in an interpretive case study of a formerly family- owned firm in the UK, Cadbury, a 200-year old confectionary manufacturer that continued to be led by family managers for 31 years after selling out of the firm. We observed the critical importance of the soft influence of family managers, who sustained the character and personality of the founding family in the business. Soft influence challenges the dominant conception of family owned and controlled businesses where influence is derived from shareholding control by family members. We suggest how implications of soft influence potentially change prevalent, hard views of the family firm because Cadbury grew under the stewardship of family members who no longer owned the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques governance arrangements behind business strategies of the UK's nuclear industry that have not contained the potentially catastrophic legacy of its toxic waste and radioactive plant. While this environmental hazard has been acknowledged by UK governments, the article traces how responsibility for its containment has devolved from government stewards to commercial agents that have prioritised interests outside the legacy. Why has the legacy of the UK's nuclear industry not been contained, and what may be learned from this experience? Drawing on a hazards-based analysis of historical issues in the industry, a number of strategic decisions behind those issues are set out, and the subsequent discussion explores possible lessons that may form the basis of a sustainable approach to contain the legacy. A trustworthy form of governance is then proposed to guide strategic decision-making in UK's nuclear sites based on the trustworthiness of government stewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a core but neglected question in corporate strategy of how unusually high-yielding (ÒsuperiorÓ) acquisition opportunities may be identified. Drawing on a situated cognition perspective of managerial action, we articulate a process in which the top management team (ÒTMTÓ) of a UK plastics manufacturer collectively engaged in Òpurposive improvisationÓ (MacLean, MacIntosh, & Seidl, 2015) to identify superior acquisition opportunities that were Òcognitively distantÓ (Gavetti, 2012) to the firm. This process, which we call Òcollective sensingÓ, is presented within a socially situated space of informal Òget-togethersÓ in the acquiring firm wherein reactions to personal ideas for acquisitions that were unknown to the firm were aired and shared among top managers. In get-togethers we suggest how the organizational roles of managers were temporarily put aside in favor of emergent social roles, while enacting these roles also enabled managers to avoid the organizational constraints of their employers. Several propositions are advanced on the nature and utility of collective sensing as a key, initiating stage in corporate strategic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]