Weexaminethe event ofsubsidiary R&D mandate lossand processes that determine a subsidiary’s subsequent evolutionary trajectory. R&D mandates reflect a value adding activity, and the loss of such mandates corresponds to responsibilities being reassigned from a fully-fledged subsidiary. In order to explore what happens to subsidiaries that lose their mandates we make use of exploratory cases that centers on the interplay between the drivers of mandate loss and subsidiaries response postmandate loss. We observe that subsidiaries regularly survive and prosper post mandate loss, unpacking these counterfactuals is the core of the present paper. This allows us to elucidate how a subsidiary can exhibit a positive evolutionary trajectory post mandate loss.
We make two distinct contributions. Firstly, we find that the informal dimensions of the mandates interact with the formal in a maner that facilitates influence over the resource and relationship portfolios that a subsidiary manages and develops. Secondly we findt hat the deployment of a subsidiary’s combining capabilities and slack resources are vestigial post mandate loss and that they are complimentarty to the freed-up resources post loss, allowing positive trajectories.