The dynamic response process to conflicting institutional demands in MNC subsidiaries - An inductive study in the Sub-Saharan African e-commerce sector

In this paper, we examine responses to the conflicting institutional demands faced by an e-commerce subsidiary located in Sub-Saharan Africa and headquartered in Europe. Following an inductive approach, we gathered data from a 6-month participant-observation study and interviews with local managers. Our findings show that the subsidiary managers responded to conflicting institutional demands in a dynamic way, taking one response after the other. In some cases, the subsidiary managers responded in a way that they thought would be satisfactory but subsequent pressures from their headquarters or their local environment pushed them to adopt a new response. In other cases, the subsidiary managers intentionally adopted responses knowing that they would (have to) adopt another response later in the process.