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Abstract
Survey responses from 1,100 multinational companies are analyzed to determine the roles played by regional headquarters, regional offices, and local offices in the Asia-Pacific. Regional headquarters, regional offices, and local offices are shown to play distinctive roles in the strategies of multinationals. The prominence of regional management centers calls into question the traditional global headquarters-national subsidiary paradigm. The present paper provides a novel, large sample analysis of the roles of regional management centers. Surveys of managers of Western and Japanese firms active in the Asia-Pacific region show that the overwhelming majority of multinationals active in the region have at least one regional management center in the Asia-Pacific. Different office types are shown to play specific roles for the multinationals, with distinct roles performed by regional headquarters, regional offices, and local offices.