Abstract While all multinational organizations face the challenge of managing tensions between local integration and global responsiveness, they are increasingly required to pursue additional, often paradoxical, objectives – such as social and commercial goals. However, we know little about how these tensions at the core of the MNC strategy interact. Based on an inductive qualitative study of four headquarters–subsidiary relationships in a Latin American Multinational Hybrid Organization, we develop a model showing the interplay of multiple tensions and management approaches to address them. This allows us to contribute to research on subsidiary roles, which we found to differ depending on how multiple tensions are addressed. Furthermore, we add to the literature on hybridity in multinational organizations by pointing out how regional differences between units of a single organization unfold. Finally, we provide some practical recommendations for the management of multinational hybrid organizations.

The authors meta-analyze relationships of perceived organizational support (POS) with attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in Western (i.e., horizontal-individualistic) and Eastern (i.e., vertical-collectivistic) cultures. The social-exchange perspective suggests that POS effects are stronger in Western cultures because employees are more likely to see the self as independent and understand their relationship with the organization in terms of reciprocity. However, the social-identity perspective suggests that POS effects are stronger in Eastern cultures because employees are more likely to see the self as interdependent and are more attuned to organizational support as an identity-related cue. Addressing these competing hypotheses, meta-analytic results from 827 independent samples (n = 332,277) across 54 countries show support for both perspectives. In the West, POS was more strongly associated with social-exchange processes than organizational-identification processes. In contrast, In the East, POS was more strongly associated with organizational-identification processes than social-exchange processes. Overall, POS was more strongly related to job attitudes and performance in the East than in the West. Cultural differences in POS effects on attitudinal outcomes were found to be increasing over time. We discuss the implications of these findings for organizational-support theory and research.