On the afternoon of the 27th, Dr. Jason McGovern continued the workshop with a presentation titledDecision-making on the Restructuring of Multinational Subsidiaries in China. Dr. Jason talked from the perspectives of decision-making, strategy development and final decisions. Decision-making, according to him, was the process of exploring resources and sharing knowledge. Both corporation and individual team could exert influence on decision-making. Knowledge was highlighted by him as a key for decision-making. In China, the case is that many firms would rather talk to clients to get a better idea of their own strength and drawback than buy official reports which are in most cases out of date. During the financial crisis, many major multinationals made incorrect decisions because they failed to get the real situation in China. Dr, Jason adopted qualitative analysis and case study as approaches. As to the selection of interviewees, he laid down some limits: They should have undergone tremendous changes, with more than 50% foreign holdings, over 100 staff, with financial date for reference, solid subsidiaries and top management team including CEO and senior positions who are core members directly responsible for the changes. For the whole, the companies should be diverse in scale, sector, type of changes and investor, in order to make comparisons possible. He explained with three cases that the performance of a subsidiary was related to the trust relation between the parent and subsidiary and the importance of the subsidiary. He concluded that it would make good outcomes if the company made the most of the knowledge of local circumstances and experience.
