(Universidad Icesi, 2020-10-01) Zaragoza Sáez, Patrocinio del Carmen; Claver Cortés, Enrique; Marco Lajara, Bartolomé; Úbeda García, Mercedes
In the knowledge society, multinationals and, more specifically, their subsidiaries acquire great importance as a source
of competitiveness for the multinational as a whole. From this perspective, this article has a double objective: (1) to define
ambidextrous subsidiary, and (2) to explore if subsidiaries are ambidextrous. A quantitative methodology is used on a sample
of 102 Spanish subsidiaries of foreign multinationals from knowledge-intensive sectors. Findings show that the subsidiaries
analyzed are highly explorers of knowledge. However, despite the coherence between the roles played and their international
competitive strategies, not all subsidiaries turned out to be ambidextrous. Only those with an integrated player role and
transnational strategies can be considered as such.
