International Multi-Unit Leadership: Developing Local Leaders in International Multi-Site Operations

In International Multi-Unit Leadership, Chris Edger builds on his earlier Effective Multi-Unit Leadership. The book has a cross-border perspective on leading from the middle in international subsidiaries that are committing significant capital to land-based multi-unit infrastructures. Secondly, it captures the zeitgeist of internationalizing hospitality, retail, service and leisure organizations facing challenges in relation to multi-channel/smart technology spread, divergent national cultures and emergent, imitative local competition. Thirdly, it addresses the conundrum that most subsidiary multi-unit leaders (regional, area and district managers) face, generating commitment amongst their unit managers and team members, whilst coping with their firm's country of origin-based control and change agendas. Continuing the themes that emerged in his earlier book, particularly around how multi-unit leaders (MULs) and directors are expected to expedite a number of competing and contradictory functions, the author finds that in subsidiary-based international situations, complexity and ambiguity escalates due to 'distance decay' and the level of internal and external contextual turbulence. Based on exemplary case studies the author examines how high-performance MULs manage paradox and ambiguity within an international context and how organizations can deliver local effectiveness within a strategic framework determined by a policy-making centre hundreds or thousands of miles away. This book will appeal to managers within international multi-unit enterprises, service directors wishing to train and coach others, students on any of the increasing number of multi-unit management programmes being run in business schools, and academics with an interest internationalizing service-based enterprises.

About the Author

Professor Chris Edger, the author of Effective Multi-Unit Leadership (Gower, 2012), holds the chair of Multi-Unit Leadership at Birmingham City Business School, Birmingham City University, UK and teaches at Warwick Business School where he has received numerous teaching awards. Chris has over twenty years of senior leisure and retail multi-unit operations, sales and support expertise working for domestic and internationally-owned multi-site companies. In 2010 he won the Personnel Today 'HR Impact of the Year' Award in his capacity as Group HR, Service and Productivity Director at the UK's largest casual dining group, Mitchells and Butlers. He has a PhD from Warwick Business School (ESRC Award), MBA and DMS from Nottingham Business School and an MSc (econ) with distinction from the London School of Economics.