Prior studies examining the impact of organizational controls on subsidiaries’ strategic initiatives have to a large extent failed to find a significant direct association between the two. We argue that this lack of direct association may be due to the fact that the control mechanisms used exert their influence on subsidiaries’ strategic initiatives indirectly by suppressing subsidiaries’ decision-making autonomy. Drawing upon agency theory we consider the effects of two types of controls, monitoring and incentive alignment, as mediated by subsidiaries’ decision-making autonomy. We test this effect on data from 115 subsidiaries of foreign multinationals operating in Greece. The results of our analyses empirically validate this assertion for both mechanisms. Our findings further show that, when both mechanisms are present, one may accentuate the effect of the other, highlighting the value of employing a contingency approach to fully capture the effects of organizational controls on the pursuit of subsidiaries’ strategic initiatives.

先前的研究研究了组织控制对子公司战略计划的影响，但在很大程度上未能找到两者之间的直接关联。我们认为这种缺乏直接联系的原因可能是由于所使用的控制机制通过抑制子公司的决策自主权而间接地对子公司的战略计划施加了影响。基于代理理论，我们考虑了两种控制方式的影响，即监控和激励调整，这是由子公司的决策自主权所介导的。我们根据在希腊运营的115家外国跨国公司的子公司的数据测试了这种影响。我们的分析结果从经验上验证了这两种机制的主张。我们的发现进一步表明，当同时存在两种机制时，