"This paper contributes to the ongoing debates on HRM in head office/subsidiary relationships and the uses of expatriates in corporate strategy, focusing specifically on the literature that argues that expatriates are used by the head offices of multinational corporations primarily for social control. Taking Erving Goffman's theories of strategic self-presentation, I suggest instead, on the basis of a detailed ethnographic study of the expatriate staff of the London office of a German multinational bank, that, in fact, not only do the local managers use the presence of the expatriates to resist head office's practices, but that the expatriates themselves employ their position strategically, to negotiate between both parties according to their own interests. This creates a situation characterized less by domination and resistance than by dynamic negotiation between different groups with different strategies engaging in particular forms of self-presentation, in which no group ultimately prevails. I conclude by arguing for the development of a new way of considering international management in theory and practice, taking into account the influences on the managers and their organization, and the strategies of individuals and groups within the MNC."

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