Perceived senior leadership opportunities in MNCs: The effect of social hierarchy and capital

Drawing on the structural perspective in organizational theory, this study develops a conceptual framework of the social hierarchy within the multinational corporation (MNC). We suggest that parent country nationals (PCNs), host country nationals (HCNs), and third country nationals (TCNs) occupy distinctively different positions in the social hierarchy, which are anchored in their differential control or access to various forms of capital or strategically valuable organizational resources. We further suggest that these positions affect employees’ perceptions of senior leadership opportunities, defined as the assessment of the extent to which nationality and location influence access to senior leadership opportunities. Using multilevel analysis of survey data from 2039 employees in seven MNCs, the study reveals two significant findings. First, HCNs and TCNs perceive that nationality and location influence access to senior leadership opportunities more than PCNs. Second, three moderating factors – gender, tenure, and education – increase the perception gaps between PCNs on the one hand and HCNs and TCNs on the other, although these results are inconsistent. These findings indicate that the structural position of PCNs, HCNs, and TCNs in the social hierarchy affect sense-making and perceptions of access to senior leadership opportunities

Scientific mindfulness: a foundation for future themes in international business

We conceptualize new ways to qualify what themes should dominate the future IB research agenda by examining three questions: Whom should we ask? What should we ask and which selection criteria should we apply? What are the contextual forces? We propose scientific mindfulness as the way forward for generating themes in IB research

Cross-cultural management education rebooted: creating positive value through scientific mindfulness

Graduates of cross-cultural management (CCM) courses should be capable of both tackling international and cross-cultural situations and creating positive value from the diversity inherent in these situations. Such value creation is challenging because these situations are typically complex due to differences in cultural values, traditions, social practices and institutions, such as legal rules, coupled with variation in, for example, wealth and civil rights among stakeholders. We argue that a scientific mindfulness approach to teaching CCM can help students identify and leverage positive aspects of differences and thereby contribute to positive change in crosscultural situations. This new approach combines mindfulness and scientific thinking with the explicit goal to drive positive change in the world. We explain how the action principles of scientific mindfulness enable learners to build positive value from cultural diversity. We then describe the enactment of these principles in the context of CCM educatio

What we talk about when we talk about "global mindset": managerial cognition in multinational corporations

Recent developments in the global economy and in multinational corporations have placed significant emphasis on the cognitive orientations of managers, giving rise to a number of concepts such as “global mindset” that are presumed to be associated with the effective management of multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper reviews the literature on global mindset and clarifies some of the conceptual confusion surrounding the construct. We identify common themes across writers, suggesting that the majority of studies fall into one of three research perspectives: cultural, strategic, and multidimensional. We also identify two constructs from the social sciences that underlie the perspectives found in the literature: cosmopolitanism and cognitive complexity and use these two constructs to develop an integrative theoretical framework of global mindset. We then provide a critical assessment of the field of global mindset and suggest directions for future theoretical and empirical research

The Role of Expatriates in the Management of Interdependence Complexity and Risk in Multinational Corporations

A multilevel analysis of environmental (country) and organizational (affiliate) factors is used to explain the differential utilization rates of U.S. nationals in overseas professional positions of a major U.S. bank with 84 branches in 43 countries. The research suggests that to the extent that the affiliates of a multinational corporation operate in environments with differing levels of political risk, cultural distance, and competition and have operations with different levels of complexity and interdependence, a single staffing policy may be inappropriate.© 1990 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1990) 21, 357–381