Do not decide from the label alone. The actual duties, authority and applicable employment requirements need assessment.
Show what the employee really does
An acting manager may exercise substantive authority or merely cover administrative tasks. The record should establish the actual situation without assuming either conclusion.
Ownership can help explain the corporate relationship, but the qualifying foreign employment, a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship, both the foreign and U.S. entities remaining active, and a primarily managerial or executive U.S. role still need independent evidence. Assess the actual managerial or executive role and organizational evidence, then examine the accompanying person’s eligibility and intended activity separately. L-1A requires qualifying organizations, qualifying prior employment abroad, and a proposed managerial or executive capacity rather than simply experienced individual contribution. Managerial capacity generally means supervising and controlling the work of other supervisory, professional or managerial employees, or managing an essential function of the organization, with authority over hiring and firing or over day-to-day operations at a senior level. Affiliation by common ownership requires the same owner or group to own and control both entities in substantially the same proportion, so the actual figures decide it. The condition that does bind sits on the other side of the border: one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years preceding the request, in a managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge capacity, with a qualifying related entity.