The role of headquarters–subsidiary geographic distance in strategic decisions by spatially disaggregated headquarters

Various studies have explored how headquarters (HQ)–subsidiary geographic distance affects HQ decisions about subsidiaries, arguing that such distance causes some strategic options to be selected over others to limit ex post communication costs. These studies have implicitly assumed that a multinational’s HQ is spatially concentrated, even though multinationals have increasingly disaggregated their HQ internationally. We examine how such HQ...