Title: The role of organisational politics in foreign direct investment

Authors: Nicos Sykianakis; Deryl Northcott; Apostolos Ballas

Addresses: Department of Accounting, Technological Education Institute of Piraeus, Athens, Greece ' AUT Business School, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand ' Department of Accounting and Finance, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece

Abstract: This paper aims to show that FDI decisions are largely political decisions made by organisational members and affected by contextual factors and the nature of the organisation's power relationships. Furthermore, the study explores the uses of management accounting information in the FDI process. The current paper is a case study of the decision making process of a Greek manufacturing company which invested in the Balkans during the 1990s. The organisational control mix initially focused to explicit references to the company's ideology but developed to one using formal, financially quantifiable information. The analysis illustrates that conflict and political behaviour emerge during strategic decision-making tasks in response to changing environmental conditions. The paper concludes that the change of the business affected by the FDI increased the influence of both the formal management control systems and those who controlled them.

Keywords: foreign direct investment; FDI; management control systems; organisational politics; political decisions; management accounting information; decision making; Greece manufacturing industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2013.058557

International Journal of Green Economics, 2013 Vol.7 No.4, pp.390 - 404

Published online: 13 Sep 2014 *

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