MNC Org Chart Sketch

Map which decisions sit at home, in the host country or in both, compare that pattern with the pressure your business faces to integrate or to respond locally, and choose one concrete rebalancing.

Mixed evidence. The structure types (Stopford and Wells; Bartlett and Ghoshal) have moderate empirical support and are read here through the integration-responsiveness lens, not as stages every firm passes through. The pattern cut-offs are a rule of thumb.

Use it when:

• You work across headquarters and one or more country units and hear complaints about slowness, duplication or "HQ does not understand us".
• You are setting up or changing a subsidiary and need to say who decides what.
• You want a factual picture of the organization you actually run, not the chart on the wall.

Skip it when:

• You have not yet chosen how to enter the market: use 7.12 Entry Mode & Local vs Global.
• Your issue is mainly culture and communication rather than decision rights: use 7.25 Working Across Cultures Bridge.

Structure is a consequence, not a preference. Stopford and Wells (1972) documented how multinationals' structures shifted as their international business grew in scale and variety. This library reads those stages through a standing design tension (our interpretation, not a verified lineage): pressure to integrate globally for efficiency against pressure to respond locally for fit (Prahalad & Doz, 1987). Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) added the transnational as the type that tries both; in a related article, Bartlett and Ghoshal (1990) argued that matrix management is a frame of mind more than a structure.

Evidence for these typologies is mixed. The durable insight is practical: where decision rights actually sit, not what the chart says, determines whether the organization behaves integrated or responsive. A misfit with market pressure shows up as slowness, duplication or gridlock.

That is why the center of this page is the decision rights map. No structure resolves the tension; it only chooses where the arguments happen.

Choose the model that best describes how you are organized today, even if your chart says otherwise.

Strong answer: (illustrative) "Geographic division in name, but pricing and product specs are decided at HQ, so in practice a global product model for the core range." Not: "We are a matrix."

A caution from Bartlett and Ghoshal (1990): no box chart delivers the pattern on its own.

Your company or unit:

Home HQ and the host countries that matter most:

Our structure, as it works in practice:

Does it fit our strategy (yes, no, uncertain)?

Illustrative example: the company, roles and counts are made up.

A Swedish maker of packaging for food producers has subsidiaries in Germany and Poland. It calls itself a geographic division.

Section 2: of 14 decisions, Home decides 9, Host 2, Shared 3 (about 64 percent Home). Pricing is marked Shared in policy but Home in practice: quotes wait for HQ.

Section 3: pressure to integrate is medium (customers are mostly local food producers), pressure to respond locally is high (retailer rules differ). Should be: geographic with a few global standards. Actually is: global product in practice. Tension 1: product spec, home wants one range, host needs a local variant, home wins and host uses workarounds.

Section 4: move pricing within an agreed band and the local spec variant to host; keep brand and quality at home. Mechanism: a monthly call between the Regional Director and the Head of Product. First action: agree the price band by the end of the month.