Suchergebnisse

With the rhetoric in international management espousing the value of being able to access and capitalise on the knowledge of a workforce with international experience in order to compete globally and the need to embrace diversity (including cultural or ethnic diversity) in and across organisations, this paper discusses the findings from a qualitative research undertaking where senior and middle managers working for multinational organisations in a cross-section of industry sectors were interviewed. A total of twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with "foreign" managers based in Europe, the majority hired on local contracts. The findings presented in this paper outline the value of following an international career from the personal viewpoint. The interviewees' perceptions of their additional competency of multicultural experience and the corresponding value recognition by their employers are also described. While most participants in the study acknowledge their international status as having been a factor in their recruitment and professional role within the organisation, the opportunities for hierarchical advancement within their employing organisations are contingent on the respective country job market conditions and policies and internal politics which at times appear prejudiced against the "foreign" workforce. This naturally has repercussions for the retention of key employees which have the international acumen supposedly of major importance for multinational organisations operating in the global economy. Where strategic human resource management propounds the competitive advantage organisations can achieve through the effective use of their human capital, this paper discusses the "reality" as perceived by the interviewees in this study, outlining the implications for strategic human resource management in practice.

We consider the ethical treatment of people working in organizations along the relativism/absolutism continuum. Work is a dominant activity in people's lives and a core part of people's identities. In it is the managerial realm of Human Resource Management where the focus on the working body primarily resides. The construction and disciplining of the working body is theoretically and empirically explored in this chapter. Do organizations construct and discipline their workforce as a means to their organizational ends (as resources), or do they treat them as means in themselves (as humans)? We trace organizational discourses that emphasize resources rather than humans and discuss the ethical ramifications of doing so. Working through Foucault's governmentality, enclosure, partitioning and ranking constructs, we present managerialist organizational discourses where compartmentalization and standardization across categories are favoured. To investigate our conceptual review empirically, we analyze and interpret qualitative interviews collected from a sample of self-initiated international assignees living in the South of France. The choice of this particular sample permitted us to isolate individuals operating on their own agency (self-initiated international assignees have, by their very nomenclature, embarked on an international working experience/career through their own agency). Their experiences illustrate how the interviewees construct themselves, and are constructed, as international working bodies. The extent to which the individuals in the sample constructed their own work/career paths within organizational boundaries in their new international context/environment is disputed, despite the apparent self-initiated and agential nature of the respondents in the sample. Our blend of theoretical concepts in organizational discourses and their internalization in the empirical sample of self-initiated international assignees furthers the discussion on the ethical nature of organizational discourses, where the "human" in human resources is largely ignored. We contribute to the ongoing debate between relativism and absolutism, arguing that equating people with material resources is to consider people as a means to an end, thereby going against the Kantian necessity to treat people as ends in themselves.

Mainstream management literature and research regarding the international career has long focused on the traditional expatriate experience. In this discourse the tendency has been to outline the benefits and issues to be considered for organizations and individuals embarking on international assignments. In contrast this chapter focuses on a special group whose positioning in the structures of employment and organization is in some ways exemplary of developing trends in the global labor force. They are the highly educated permanent expatriates who remain in the host country indefinitely (that is without a pre-determined organizational option of repatriation to their initial home country). We engage with the mainstream ways of dealing with this group and take a critical approach in exploring their international careers. In fact we take a critical stance on the notion of 'career' itself and question its ubiquitous application. Adopting a loose and critical review of Foucault's governmentality, technologies of power and domination and technologies of the self, we aim to explore organizational and individual power and control with regard to an individual's career in an international context, and to propose a practical model for professionals working in areas such as human resource management (HRM), human resource development (HRD) and career management consultancy.

Is it time to reimagine the kaleidoscope career model (KCM) beyond gendered career patterns? In this article, we draw upon the KCM in a novel way to show how skilled migrants, just like a kaleidoscope, adjust their career parameters and construct bespoke career paths in order to cope with the career disruption of an international move. Specifically, the study unpacks the careers of 38 skilled migrants in Ireland and suggests an alternative explanation for skilled migrants' underemployment. The findings show that this macro career transition – from home to host country – presents both opportunities and challenges for individual migrants in their quest to balance their work- and non-work-related demands. The study contributes to existing literature and debate on skilled migrants' careers in the business and management discipline by presenting a more complete overview of the concerns and instrumental career choices of skilled migrants in the host country.