The way employees of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) translate corporate governance mechanisms into everyday decision-making processes

This research study investigates the role of employees of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in translating corporate governance mechanisms into everyday decision-making processes. The main objective of this research is to study how employees shape an organisation’s decision-making processes while its corporate governance systems and policies are travelling throughout its different business layers. The researcher’s emphasis is on the employees’ thoughts, ideas, dreams, individual experiences, reflections, life stories, artefacts, cultural contexts, and productions, all of which describe routine and problematic moments in their corporate lives. The researcher has adopted a qualitative research approach by applying the grounded theory methodology, specifically the Gioia data analysis technique. The analysis focuses on research data collected from thirty-four semi-structured interviews, which is the researcher’s primary means for capturing the voice of the employees participating in this research study. A data structure of four distinct third-order dimensions has emerged, based on second-order themes, and first-order codes. It is observed that while making decisions at work, (1) employees integrate their personal and professional lives together, (2) employees integrate their work-related relationships, (3) employees integrate their autonomy with control attempts, which balances power, responsibility, and accountability, and finally (4) employees integrate their various internal and external stakeholders’ interests. These emerging third-order dimensions imply the theoretical contribution of this study. Further, while implementing their corporate governance mechanisms, employees constantly develop their human connections within and around their corporate environment. In collaboration with their senior managers and others in the workplace, employees exert power through an abstract medium, not limited by any boundaries, dimensions, times, or places. Employees also undergo a recreation process of their thoughts and ideas in new shapes, and at a non-stop pace. Every time employees address their corporate governance mechanisms, policies, procedures, and guidelines, they are reshaping and recreating these mechanisms and giving them new meanings and forms, in a continuous process that never ends.