International mobility: an opportunity for managers to acquire and transfer competencies

Pascale Berthier (1) , Alain Roger (1)

1 Laboratoire de Recherche Magellan

As companies globalize, 'human capital' tends to become a strategic asset; hence, the number of studies focusing on the international mobility of managers. When companies decide to grow internationally, managerial and organizational factors play a key role, together with strategic, financial and commercial factors. The corporate culture, the international experience of managers, knowledge networks, competencies, and the control and coordination of subsidiaries must be taken into account, since organizational structures of multinational companies (MNCs) have become more complex (Meier and Schier, 2005). Managerial and organizational factors influence the way companies make decisions concerning the international mobility of managers and the way expatriates or 'international managers' acquire the competencies they need (Pierre, 2008). In this chapter, we will first describe the competencies expatriates acquire abroad, then we will summarize the results of a field study which was conducted with 40 top managers in three French multinational companies. The study enabled us to identify the factors which facilitate or inhibit knowledge transfer, both on the company and on the expatriate side

Mots clés: Mobility; transfer; competencies; expatriate

Pascale Berthier, Alain Roger. International mobility: an opportunity for managers to acquire and transfer competencies. Ulrike MAYRHOFER. Management of multinational companies, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.152-170, 2013, 978-1-137-02388-9. ⟨hal-00958310⟩