How corporate headquarters add value in the digital age

29/04/2019

New article by IIB’s Jan Schmitt, Benoit Decreton, and Phillip Nell in “Journal of Organization Design”!

What is it about?

How will digitalization influence the role of corporate headquarters (CHQs) and their relationships with their operating units? According to 67 senior CHQ managers in Austria, CHQs will become more powerful and more involved in their operating units, as the ongoing digitalization will provide CHQ managers with more timely and better information. In this article, we discuss the potential pitfalls of such a narrative and offer ideas for how to increase CHQs’ value-added in times of digitalization.

Why is it important?

Digitalization is expected to change the CHQ of the future in terms of how the CHQ will interact with its operating units and how the CHQ will add value to the firm. However, research and managers’ knowledge on these topics is still limited. We offer some first insights into these topics. In particular, we suggest that CHQs place emphasis on social interactions for data to be effectively collected and analyzed, for decision-making power to be adequately allocated, and for CHQ involvement to be informed and necessary.

Have a look at the article:

https://rdcu.be/byrCd

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