Global Careers

Michael Dickmann, Yehuda Baruch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136907968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

With interest in the global environment and the management of 'talent' increasing, understanding the issue of global careers is crucial for students and managers alike.

This exciting book captures broad research extending to a large set of diverse motivations, experiences, and outcomes of international work in global 'for profit' and 'not for profit' organizations and delivers nuanced insights into the management of international employees for firms and governmental/non-governmental organizations.

This text covers global career issues in-depth, working at the intersection of career and international human resource management and using a number of perspectives, such as organizational or individual ones. Chapters include:

• 
  
  

• theories, frameworks and concepts
• supporting research/data where relevant
• managerial implications, summaries, learning points, figures and tables.

Illustrated with up to the minute case studies from companies such as Pepsi, Imperial Tobacco, Cadbury Schweppes, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Philips, HSBC, Misys, Philip Morris International and Masterfoods, Global Careers is essential reading for all those studying or concerned with career management, human resource management and international business.

Part I
Global careers in context: competitive configurations, multifaceted career patterns and their social spaces

1
Global careers: an introduction

Objectives

This chapter:

• defines the major constructs in relation to global careers;

• outlines key theories relating to global careers;

• depicts major migration trends;

• gives a first introduction to expatriation and its challenges;

• outlines the book’s structure and flow;

• provides an introduction to a global career framework which will guide the reader throughout this book.

Introduction

Some 50 years have passed since the world was first depicted as a ‘global village’ (MacLuhan 1960). A formal definition by Reilly and Campbell (1990) suggests that globalization is ‘the integration of business activities across geographical and organizational boundaries … it is the freedom to conceive, design, buy, produce, distribute and sell products and services’. The meaning of ‘global’ has evolved, and the trend is for more people and organizations to become ‘global’. A new global infrastructure has emerged that enables people and communities to cross national borders (less so cultural borders), and further enables people to work outside their national home with the option to return to it. The changes cover wide-ranging areas including technological, sociocultural, political, legal and economic issues.

It has been an axiom of management that business is becoming, or has become, global in scope. For business, a major effect of globalization is the existence of greater threats, but at the same time, greater opportunities. The threats are caused by a more variable environment and increased competition whereas the opportunities are generated by increased growth of the markets and the business. Industries and companies operate not so much in local or national spheres, but in a worldwide market for goods and services. This view has become highly pervasive. Yet, as we will explicate below, we would not fully endorse this globalization perspective for all parts of the world’s population.

At the individual level, working globally has become a reality for many people, in particular the privileged – people from affluent countries and individuals who hold desired skills and qualifications. The international opportunities associated with globalization are less pronounced for rank-and-file workers as these might not possess scarce capabilities that are demanded by organizations. Moreover, legal regulations and lesser personal funds, as well as less extensive networks or information access can also inhibit cross-border worker mobility.

The issues surrounding global careers correspond greatly with the impetus for firms to go global. These vary, but basically stem from the need and will to expand and to be efficient, innovative and locally responsive. Global markets are larger than local ones. Workforces in different countries exhibit different skill sets, knowledge bases and labour costs. Global expansion may take different routes, with diverse implications for the flow of people across borders. Opening a subsidiary in another country normally requires a number of expatriates. However, the size of expatriation will depend on strategic choices (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992; Baruch and Altman 2002) as well as practical implications. Conversely, a franchising strategy would not require substantial individual moves, if any, from the home country. Whatever the strategic choices, they will have implications for global HRM and organizational career systems as well as individual career actors.

There is a vast increase in global flows of capital, goods and services. Further, there are a growing number of individuals, especially highly educated people, who have experienced living, studying, operating, or just travelling in multiple countries. Firms do not limit themselves to national borders, and advances in technologies help to accelerate the process.

The increase in cross-border flows of money and the products of work is testimony to the idea that markets really are becoming more global. Future competition will simultaneously take place at a local, national and cross-national level if there are the means available to deliver products and services to customers at a distance. Certain products are limited to local delivery (e.g. hairdressing services and, for now but possibly not in the future, bus driving), but a wider range of products and services are not anchored to a single local place. Many knowledge-based products are developed and delivered via the internet. Several individual careers, built on providing services to a local set of customers, and in particular to large organizations, may not be sustainable in the longer term. The exception may be when there are practical and significant barriers to external competition (e.g. local regulations). New standards are developed, which are internationally binding (e.g. ISO 9000), and increasingly firms have to perform to global standards in order to compete and survive.

The implications for careers are vast. A growing number of individuals are seeking and finding opportunities to work abroad, either of their own choice or due to external pressures. Some of these undertake the strenuous journey to move abroad unsupported by their employers. For instance, there are millions of migrants in today’s world. Others might only seek to work for a limited time abroad or even strive for a job that allows them foreign travel while still living in their country of origin. Some individuals go abroad – and others simply stay abroad – and open their own businesses. Others move overseas to study, and find it too tempting to stay rather than return to their home country. Still others might work for their firms as expatriates and are, therefore, normally sponsored by their employers. This array of individuals with international experience indicates that there are a large number of managers with international experience and/or global potential.

For businesses that require a worldwide presence, such people are mostly an asset, either as employees or as service providers. Some of these people will work for a limited time period (e.g. typical expatriation times are two to three years). Others might become ‘permanent’ expatriates, for their firm, or self-designated global citizens, and will spent their entire careers in a variety of countries. The reasons may be due to the individual or the employer. Sometimes, permanent work abroad is necessary due to the organization’s mission. For example, the UN’s World Food Programme needs permanent expatriates willing to go to many, often unsafe, hardship locations. The traditional one company, one country model of employment is slowly crumbling. Moreover, those who try to stick to the traditional model find they cannot compete with the new breed of younger managers, whose reference groups might be essentially global. Opportunities will accrue to those whose careers reflect the global nature of business.

There is a major divide between the so-called developed countries and the developing ones. People move fairly frequently and with no major difficulties within Europe or between Canada and the USA. It is more difficult to move across continents, e.g. from Europe or Japan to the USA and vice versa. A ‘Green Card’ is not easily attainable for people aspiring to work in the USA and neither are work permits in Europe. However, the difficulty level substantially increases for moves from developing countries.

Firms needing to send employees to work across borders face a multitude of obstacles to overcome, for instance if a person wishes to immigrate to an oil-rich emirate or for a Third World country citizen who aims to work in a Western country. This is particularly true for third country nationals (TCNs). A TCN is an employee working for a company in a country which is neither their country of origin nor the country where the company’s headquarters resides. An example is a person from Portugal working for Nissan (headquarters in Japan) in a factory located in the UK. While many TCNs work in the Gulf (for example, from India, Egypt, Palestine, and a significant number from Europe and Australia), they can gain a temporary work permit and employment rights, but not citizenship. More lenient, but still serious obstacles are put in the way of a person immigrating to most European countries. These individuals might only have access to citizenship after some four to five years of working with a formal work permit. The opposite flow is less pronounced. Unless we talk of someone who wishes, for example, to retire in an exotic south-Asian country, people do not tend to emigrate en masse to the ‘Third World’. Many persons expatriate for a limited time period due to commitment to their employers, the expectations of their employers, or in exchange for financial benefits (See Baruch and Altman (2002) as described in Chapter 3).

Yet, neither immigration nor expatriation are without variations, nor are they the only forms of global work. Below, we embark on a first discussion of the diverse nature and terminology of global careers.

What is a global career?

The dilemma starts here. There is no clear definition about what a global career is, and it is unclear what is meant by ‘global firm’ or global organization. At the organizational level, some claim that there are no truly global organizations – Hu (1992) has argued that the ‘global company’ is a myth, or as he titled his paper: ‘Global or Stateless Corporations are National Firms with International Operations’.

Box 1.1 Nestlé – a global firm?

Nestlé is one of the very few firms that seem to be truly global. Less than 5 per cent of their personnel and less than 5 per cent of their production remain within the national borders of Switzerland, where their HQ is located. Yet, Nestlé sets its pride in being ‘Swiss’. The culture and ethos of the firm is based on its Swiss roots.

It is typical for almost all MNCs to have their HQ, much of their operations, and in particular, their cultural roots, based in a certain country. To complicate the issue, there are other organizations that are, or may be considered, ‘global’, which are not merely business firms. Supranational organizations such as the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN) or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), churches, diplomatic services, and even many national armed forces operate across national borders. Their HQ can be located at a ‘global city’ such as Brussels or Geneva, but the operation is not limited to specific countries. INGOs such as Water Aid or Greenpeace operating all over the world, send their employees and volunteers to manage operations and work for them in many locations. In terms of ‘talent war’ and ‘talent management’, they compete for global human talent, and face similar issues to those that business organizations face when looking for expatriates to manage overseas operations. The scope of INGOs’ activities is expanding continuously, as new challenges emerge. In certain cases, established business organizations might well learn from INGOs about key elements of expatriation. One example could be security, an issue that req...