José Vale, Cidália Oliveira, Rui Silva, Vera Vale, Margarida Rodrigues, Maria do Céu Alves
In multinationals, the relationship between headquarters and subsidiaries can be complex, namely when expatriates are used as control mechanisms. Furthermore, the literature on expatriate adjustment research has been predominantly "expatriate-centric" and has neglected the subsidiary’s point of view. Thus, this research aims to comprehend the expatriate’s role as an MNC (Multinational Corporation ) control mechanism in a subsidiary owned by a foreign multinational, considering the impact of cultural distance, language and tensions created after his placement. An in-depth single case study was conducted in a subsidiary owned by a Japanese multinational corporation. Evidence gathered to show that the parent company influences the subsidiary’s management control system through expatriates' placement. In this study, two different perspectives were obtained, the expatriate’s perspective and the manager’s perspective. This allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of the expatriate's role and difficulties. These findings contribute to the International Management (IM) literature on cultural distance, language, and conflict/tensions in expatriate adjustment, showing that these three elements matter and need to be taken into account in empirical research on the role of expatriates as a control mechanism in MNC contexts.