Improving subsidiary performance via inpatriate assignments: The role of host country national subsidiary CEOs’ social ties and motivational cultural intelligence

Inpatriation experience (i.e., working at headquarters) for host-country national (HCN) subsidiary managers is supposed to be beneficial for foreign subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer and financial performance. Applying upper echelons theory, we investigate whether HCN subsidiary CEOs with inpatriation experience promote knowledge transfer from multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters to their subsidiaries via the formation of social ties at MNC headquarters to drive subsidiary performance. Moreover, we theorize and investigate if HCN subsidiary CEOs’ motivational cultural intelligence can amplify the positive effect of inpatriation experience. Combining survey and archival data from 289 subsidiaries of MNCs in South Korea, our results partially support our theoretical model. Our findings offer important implications for expatriate staffing, inpatriation assignments, and subsidiary management.