The role of accounting and control practices in coping with post-acquisition tensions: An ethnography of a subsidiary

This thesis is based on a year-long ethnography study of a subsidiary coping with post-acquisition integration tensions. Prior literature shows that parent firms impose their global strategies and practices on the subsidiaries and the subsidiaries adopt those imposed strategies and practices. This thesis adds further insight by focusing on how a subsidiary implemented its own local strategy and practices to balance the global goals of the parent firm with the local goals of the subsidiary. The locally emerged strategy and practices resulted from a dynamic and continuous coping process that aided the subsidiary to exercise control in the post-acquisition integration.