IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rdg/jhdxdp/jhd-dp2019-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Beyond Nationality: International Experience as a Key Dimension for Subsidiary Staffing Choices in MNEs

Author

Listed:
  • Chipoong Kim

    (Henley Business School, University of Reading)

  • Chul Chung

    (Henley Business School, University of Reading)

  • Chris Brewster

    (Henley Business School, University of Reading)

Abstract

The literature on international staffing in MNEs often focuses on staffing choices based on nationality categories (e.g. PCNs, HCNs, TCNs) for key positions in subsidiaries when examining their impacts on subsidiary outcomes. Considering both nationality and international experience, we suggest an integrative typology to identify and classify various types of traditional and alternative subsidiary staffing options and evaluate them in relation to social capital and knowledge flows across MNE organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Chipoong Kim & Chul Chung & Chris Brewster, 2019. "Beyond Nationality: International Experience as a Key Dimension for Subsidiary Staffing Choices in MNEs," John H Dunning Centre for International Business Discussion Papers jhd-dp2019-03, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    • Handle: RePEc:rdg:jhdxdp:jhd-dp2019-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://assets.henley.ac.uk/defaultUploads/JHD-2019-03-Kim-Chung-and-Brewster.pdf?mtime=20190719165723&_ga=2.23104124.794894739.1578997389-1539690275.1507819089
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harzing, Anne-Wil, 2001. "Of bears, bumble-bees, and spiders: the role of expatriates in controlling foreign subsidiaries," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 366-379, January.
    2. Collings, David G. & Morley, Michael J. & Gunnigle, Patrick, 2008. "Composing the top management team in the international subsidiary: Qualitative evidence on international staffing in U.S. MNCs in the Republic of Ireland," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 197-212, March.
    3. B Sebastian Reiche & Anne-Wil Harzing & Maria L Kraimer, 2009. "The role of international assignees' social capital in creating inter-unit intellectual capital: A cross-level model," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 40(3), pages 509-526, April.
    4. Elizabeth Maitland & André Sammartino, 2015. "Managerial cognition and internationalization," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 46(7), pages 733-760, September.
    5. Morten T. Hansen, 2002. "Knowledge Networks: Explaining Effective Knowledge Sharing in Multiunit Companies," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 232-248, June.
    6. René A Belderbos & Mariëlle G Heijltjes, 2005. "The determinants of expatriate staffing by Japanese multinationals in Asia: control, learning and vertical business groups," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 36(3), pages 341-354, May.
    7. Kate M. Andrews & Brian L. Delahaye, 2000. "Influences On Knowledge processes In Organizational Learning: The Psychosocial Filter," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(6), pages 797-810, September.
    8. Birkinshaw, Julian & Hood, Neil & Young, Stephen, 2005. "Subsidiary entrepreneurship, internal and external competitive forces, and subsidiary performance," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 227-248, April.
    9. Chen, Haiyang & Hu, Michael Y., 2002. "An analysis of determinants of entry mode and its impact on performance," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 193-210, April.
    10. Kate Yue Zhang & Bart Rienties, 2017. "Unpacking differences in psychological contracts of organizational and self-initiated expatriates," Journal of Global Mobility, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 93-108, March.
    11. Caligiuri, Paula & Bonache, Jaime, 2016. "Evolving and enduring challenges in global mobility," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 127-141.
    12. Son Le & Mark Kroll, 2017. "CEO international experience: Effects on strategic change and firm performance," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(5), pages 573-595, July.
    13. B. Sebastian Reiche, 2012. "Knowledge Benefits of Social Capital upon Repatriation: A Longitudinal Study of International Assignees," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(6), pages 1052-1077, September.
    14. Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen & Mats Ehrnrooth & Alexei Koveshnikov & Kristiina Mä;kelä, 2014. "Cultural and language skills as resources for boundary spanning within the MNC," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 45(7), pages 886-905, September.
    15. Argote, Linda & Ingram, Paul, 2000. "Knowledge Transfer: A Basis for Competitive Advantage in Firms," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 150-169, May.
    16. Liisa Mäkelä & Barbara Bergbom & Kati Saarenpää & Vesa Suutari, 2015. "Work-family conflict faced by international business travellers," Journal of Global Mobility, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 3(2), pages 155-168, June.
    17. Ingmar Björkman & Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen & Li Li, 2004. "Managing knowledge transfer in MNCs: the impact of headquarters control mechanisms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 35(5), pages 443-455, September.
    18. Georgakakis, Dimitrios & Dauth, Tobias & Ruigrok, Winfried, 2016. "Too much of a good thing: Does international experience variety accelerate or delay executives’ career advancement?," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 425-437.
    19. Cappellen, Tineke & Janssens, Maddy, 2005. "Career paths of global managers: Towards future research," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 348-360, November.
    20. Stahl, Günter K. & Miller, Edwin L. & Tung, Rosalie L., 2002. "Toward the boundaryless career: a closer look at the expatriate career concept and the perceived implications of an international assignment," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 216-227, October.
    21. Klaus E. Meyer & Ram Mudambi & Rajneesh Narula, 2011. "Multinational Enterprises and Local Contexts: The Opportunities and Challenges of Multiple Embeddedness," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 235-252, March.
    22. Kyoung Yong Kim & Seemantini Pathak & Steve Werner, 2015. "When do international human capital enhancing practices benefit the bottom line? An ability, motivation, and opportunity perspective," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 46(7), pages 784-805, September.
    23. Harvey, Michael & Griffith, David & Kiessling, Tim & Moeller, Miriam, 2011. "A multi-level model of global decision-making: Developing a composite global frame-of-reference," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 177-184, April.
    24. Schmid, Stefan & Wurster, Dennis J., 2017. "International work experience: Is it really accelerating the way to the management board of MNCs?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 991-1008.
    25. Bahn, S & Cameron, R, 2013. "Sourcing Specialised Skilled Labour in the Global Arena: A Change in the Way We View Work in Australia?," Australian Bulletin of Labour, National Institute of Labour Studies.
    26. Vesa Suutari & Christelle Tornikoski & Liisa Mäkeläa, 2012. "Career Decision Making of Global Careerists," Grenoble Ecole de Management (Post-Print) hal-00761562, HAL.
    27. Blomstermo, Anders & Eriksson, Kent & Lindstrand, Angelika & Sharma, D. Deo, 2004. "The perceived usefulness of network experiential knowledge in the internationalizing firm," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 355-373.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kiessling, Timothy & Maley, Jane Frances & Moeller, Miriam & Dabić, Marina, 2023. "Managing global knowledge transfer: Inpatriate manager embeddedness and firm innovation," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2).
    2. João Vasco Coelho, 2022. "Recruiting Business Expatriates in Portugal: The Moderating Role of Employee Willingness," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, vol. 8(2), pages 206-227, July.
    3. Zhou, Yuanyuan & Liu, Peng & Teng, Min & Wang, Zhen, 2023. "Back to roots: TMTs’ country-specific experience, FDI preference, and political center favoritism," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(4).
    4. Corner, A.J. & Liu, Leigh Anne & Bird, Allan, 2021. "Intercultural competencies for emerging markets: A contextualized approach," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schmid, Stefan & Wurster, Dennis J., 2017. "International work experience: Is it really accelerating the way to the management board of MNCs?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 991-1008.
    2. Sarabi, Almasa & Froese, Fabian J. & Hamori, Monika, 2017. "Is inpatriate assignment experience a ticket to the top of a foreign subsidiary? The moderating effect of subsidiary context," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 680-690.
    3. Caligiuri, Paula & Bonache, Jaime, 2016. "Evolving and enduring challenges in global mobility," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 127-141.
    4. Heather Berry, 2017. "Managing valuable knowledge in weak IP protection countries," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(7), pages 787-807, September.
    5. Tung, Rosalie L., 2016. "New perspectives on human resource management in a global context," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 142-152.
    6. Shao, Jun Jie & Ariss, Akram AL, 2020. "Knowledge transfer between self-initiated expatriates and their organizations: Research propositions for managing SIEs," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(1).
    7. Kong, Lingshuang & Ciabuschi, Francesco & Martín Martín, Oscar, 2018. "Expatriate managers' relationships and reverse knowledge transfer within emerging market MNCs: The mediating role of subsidiary willingness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 216-229.
    8. Khadija Straaten & Niccolò Pisani & Ans Kolk, 2020. "Unraveling the MNE wage premium," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(9), pages 1355-1390, December.
    9. Stefan Schmid & Sebastian Baldermann, 2021. "CEOs’ International Work Experience and Compensation," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 313-364, June.
    10. Vesa Peltokorpi, 2023. "The “language” of career success: The effects of English language competence on local employees’ career outcomes in foreign subsidiaries," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(2), pages 258-284, March.
    11. Phookan, Himadree & Sharma, Revti Raman, 2021. "Subsidiary power, cultural intelligence and interpersonal knowledge transfer between subsidiaries within the multinational enterprise," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(4).
    12. Ilya R. P. Cuypers & Charmi Patel & Gokhan Ertug & Jiatao Li & Youtha Cuypers, 2022. "Top management teams in international business research: A review and suggestions for future research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(3), pages 481-515, April.
    13. Heejin Kim & B. Sebastian Reiche & Anne-Wil Harzing, 2022. "How does successive inpatriation contribute to subsidiary capability building and subsidiary evolution? An organizational knowledge creation perspective," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(7), pages 1394-1419, September.
    14. Ahrens, Carolin & Oehmichen, Jana & Wolff, Michael, 2018. "Expatriates as influencers in global work arrangements: Their impact on foreign-subsidiary employees’ ESOP participation," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 452-462.
    15. Stefan Schmid & Simon Mitterreiter, 2020. "International Top Managers on Corporate Boards: Dissimilarity and Tenure," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 787-825, October.
    16. Florian Becker-Ritterspach & Christoph Dörrenbächer, 2011. "An Organizational Politics Perspective on Intra-firm Competition in Multinational Corporations," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 533-559, August.
    17. Kawai, Norifumi & Chung, Chul, 2019. "Expatriate utilization, subsidiary knowledge creation and performance: The moderating role of subsidiary strategic context," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 24-36.
    18. Kiessling, Timothy & Maley, Jane Frances & Moeller, Miriam & Dabić, Marina, 2023. "Managing global knowledge transfer: Inpatriate manager embeddedness and firm innovation," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2).
    19. Latukha, M. & Veselova, A. & Selivanovskikh, L. & Artukh, E. & Mitskevich, E., 2016. "Re-thinking the role of talent management in a firm’s performance: Talent management practices and absorptive capacity," Working Papers 6442, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    20. Klaus E. Meyer & Chengguang Li & Andreas P. J. Schotter, 0. "Managing the MNE subsidiary: Advancing a multi-level and dynamic research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 0, pages 1-39.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International staffing; multinational enterprises (MNEs); nationality; international experience; social capital; knowledge flows;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rdg:jhdxdp:jhd-dp2019-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marie Pearson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bsrdguk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.