Organizational Practice Adoption in the MNC: The Role of Managers' Core Self-Evaluations

Although the adoption of organizational practices by subsidiaries is a key concern in multinational corporations (MNCs), research on the individuals involved in practice adoption is lacking. Despite calls in the MNC literature for investigations of the psychological foundations of managers' behavior, such investigations are rare and have been complicated by difficulties in obtaining intimate assessments from managers. Building on personality research, we propose that subsidiary managers' core self-evaluations (CSE) positively influence their practice-adoption behavior. Consistent with personality and organizational control research, we also posit that formal and informal controls play contingent roles. Our analysis of a unique dataset of individuals involved in 130 practice-adoption cases within one European MNC offers large support for our hypotheses.