Top Management Team Diversity and Manager Experience in an Intercultural World: Implications for MNE Subsidiary Performance in Emerging Markets

We use a configurational perspective to integrate upper echelon and institutional theories to understand how top management team (TMT) diversity and managerial experience in different institutional settings affect multinational enterprise subsidiary performance in emerging markets. We introduce the novel idea of intercultural dialogue as a relevant institutional difference between home and host countries to account for how management diversity and experience influence subsidiary performance. We collected data from subsidiary managers in two emerging markets to test theories in a new context. Our results indicate a context dependent interplay between upper echelon and institutional factors that drive subsidiary performance outcomes. We discuss the implications for human resource management with respect to expatriate staffing in emerging market subsidiaries.