Innovation management in subsidiaries of multinational corporations in the Brazilian electro-electronic industry

With the increasing pressure for innovation in the last decades, multinational companies have started to increase the decentralization of their activities, in order to reach the affiliate´s contribution to the generation of knowledge and innovation. The subsidiaries, on the other hand, seek for more responsibilities, especially in activities with intense technological content, in order to guarantee their competitiveness. In this way, this research analyzed the relationship between responsibilities of a subsidiary with its innovation management practices. To support that, an exploratory case study of five subsidiaries of the electro-electronic industry installed in Brazil is proposed. The chosen theoretical framework is that which considers the innovation management as a process, and adopts the subsidiary perspective to explain its evolution. Three sets of determinants are studied in order to explain the evolution of the responsibilities of a subsidiary: headquarters, subsidiary and local environment determinants. The results make it evident a positive relationship between subsidiaries responsibilities and their practices of technological innovation management, and also explain how this relationship works. Yet, the research findings suggest significant differences between the subsidiaries studied, and that they have focused their innovation management on the market, with little efforts to longer-term technology research practices.