1

UNIVERSITE PARIS IX DAUPHINE

LABORATOIRE CREPA












International
Career Management:
The Relevance of
the Garbage-Can Model


by Pierre Romelaer and Isabelle Huault
1




Working Paper n80
June 2002

1
Pierre Romelaer is Professor of Organization Theory and of Management of Human Resources at the
University Paris IX Dauphine. Personal web page: http://www.dauphine.fr/crepa /pierre_romelaer.html
E-mail : romelaer@dauphine.fr Web site of the Crepa laboratory: http://www.dauphine.fr/crepa
Isabelle Huault is Professor of Organization Theory and of Management of Human Resources at the
Universities Paris XII and Paris II. She is also associated with the Crepa laboratory of the University Paris IX
Dauphine. Personal web page www.huault.net E-mail address isabelle@huault.net
Pierre Romelaer thanks Ross Charnock for the corrections to his English. All remaining mistakes are
probably his. This paper is a slightly modified English version of Romelaer and Huault (1996).
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CONTENTS


I ntroduction
1) The limited successes of international career
management
2) Changing the organization theory used in practice.
3) The "garbage-can" model
4) Data on international career management validate the
garbage-can model.
5) Management tools for international career management
6) Perspectives for future research
Conclusion
Annex 1: Methodology and empirical data
Annex 2: The notions of "action system" and of "activity
system"
References
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27
31
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Summary




This paper begins by showing that the methods currently used for the management of
international careers and transfers meet a lot of problems. The hypothesis is then made that
such problems may arise (1) because the classical management methods can only function
when decisions can be made and controled through objectives, procedures, and the
hierarchy, and (2) because international career and transfer decisions cannot function that
way.
We then present an alternative, the garbage can model of organizational decision, and
provide empirical data showing that international career and transfer decisions have almost
all twenty-one characteristics of garbage can decisions which have been identified in the
literature. These data validate the applicability of the garbage can model for international
career and transfer decisions. We can then confidently propose management methods
which should be more effective since they are adapted to the garbage can nature of these
situations.
We also show why classical management methods are very likely to be ineffective
precisely because international career and transfer decisions are of the garbage can type.
This paper is a revised and updated version of Romelaer and Huault (1996).
4
I ntroduction
The group of managers is undoubtedly an important human resource of the firm. Over the
past twenty years, managing this resource gradually appeared a major challenge for all
firms, and particularly so for international firms. In this area, the management of
international careers and transfers is of particular relevance: it is through international
mobility that the composition of the managers group in terms of nationalities is created and
changed, and this composition may have an influence on the integration between the
divisions and subsidiaries of the firm, on the capacity to develop and implement strategies,
and ultimately on the growth of operations and revenues.
As a consequence, management research increasingly considers the group of "international
managers" of a firm as one of its main assets, as the very nervous system of the
organization and as the locus of informal coordination between subsidiaries (Hedlund and
Rolander, 1990; Lorange and Probst, 1990).
Human resources represent an element of flexibility which can counterbalance bureaucratic
methods, rigid management systems, and strategic plans mainly designed around financial
variables. For this reason, many authors consider that recruitment and continuing education
of international personnel are crucial variables, as well as career management,
geographical mobility practices, the creation of multinational teams and the capacity to
manage cultural diversity (Tung, 1984; Doz and Prahalad, 1986; Evans et al., 1989;
Hiltrop and Janssens, 1990; Bartlett and Goshal, 1991; Evans, 1993, Roberts et al., 1998).

On the important topics mentioned above, the present paper has four limited objectives:
- to show that international career management has still limited success in multinational
groups,
- to present, on the basis of empirical evidence, some fundamental mechanisms which
influence international career management,
- to show that these mechanisms are well explained by one organization theory named the
"garbage-can" model (Cohen, March, and Olsen, 1972),
- to show which management methods may work for international career and transfer
decisions, the methods being of course derived from the garbage-can model. And
incidently to show why traditional management methods are doomed to give very
limited results.


1) The limited successes of international career management
Over the years the literature on international careers and transfers has progressively
converged toward a "standard model" saying that the main components and the main
management levers in this area are the following:
- the management of international geographical mobility, stressing the importance of
selection (Tung, 1981; Zeira and Banai, 1984; Bolino and Feldman, 2000), of continuing
education (Mendenhall, 1987), and of the identification of key actors in the process
(Daudin et al., 1991). The mobility objectives most often mentioned are competence
transfer, managerial and financial control, and the diffusion of common values (Carpenter
et al., 2000).
- the equitable treatment of different groups of managers. In this respect a particular
importance is given to managers' appraisal and to administrative handling of international
transfers, with various aspects such as currency exchange, financial packages, legal,
5
medical and social benefits (Mason et al., 2001). These aspects are complex since
managers are geographically dispersed across very heterogeneous national environments.
- the management of career paths including international assignments (Doz and
Pralahad, 1987; Bartlett and Goshal, 1991; Bournois, 1991).
- the role of headquarters managers, of subsidiary managers, and of the methods
used to fill key positions (Youssef, 1973; Zeira and Harari, 1977; Heenan and Perlmutter,
1979).

A "normal model taking into account these different actions and management tools has
progressively become considered as good practice. It can now be found in many
textbooks (Evans et al., 1989; Dowling and Schuler, 1990; Brewster, 1990; Black et al.,
1992; Boutellier et al., 1999).

However, empirical investigations reported in management research articles, as well as
managers declarations, show that international career management has limited success:
A first problem comes from deficiencies in the selection process (Tung, 1984). The
manager's relational capacities are not taken into account, no interest is granted to the
family factor, and training before transfer is not adequate. Other authors stress the
insufficient international experience of many of the human resource management
specialists, the fact that their expertise is partly conditioned by their socio-political national
context, and the fact that "trying to obtain slimmer corporate staff and to decentralize
management gives the final blow": in the end, the human resource managers are running
behind the internationalization process (Janssens, 2001; Oddou et al., 2000).
A second problem is related to the difficulties of career management and to the
problems met when the expatriate comes back. Career management objectives are not
always embodied in well formalized procedures, and there exists a gap between what is
said and what is done. Some promises made to the expatriate when he or she is sent abroad
are more or less kept, or even are altogether forgotten (Harvey, 1989; Lozarova and
Caliguiri, 2001). In the most extreme cases, the returning expatriate must fight alone to
find a position in the firm, as everyone has forgotten that he would come back some day.
The inadaptation of some succession plans has boomerang effects: returning expatriates are
destabilized and stressed, the management of a precious human resource is ridden with
inefficiencies, and the value granted to international mobility within the firm suffers a
dramatic drop. As one (non expatriate) manager told us: "Why should I try to get
international experience? In this company, being sent abroad is a one-way ticket".
Above all, coordination of career management policies among the various subsidiaries
is still at an embryonic stage. Villette (1991) captures the challenge very well: "the
essential element is the communication and exchange capacity between various groups of
managers. Some have a succession of assignments in various countries, others don't move,
but none of them should be ignored or neglected". The paradox is that on the one hand
powerful centralized transnational communication tools are developed (which might lead
us to think in terms of integration), when at the same time the human resource practices
remain ethnocentric
2
. Firms are sometimes very unhappy about their own capacity to
develop a "hothouse" of managers qualified for key positions in international operations.
Ondrack (1985) has shown that none of the American or European multinationals he has
analysed in his research had yet reached the stage of a real transnational management

2
Human resource practices are said to be ethnocentric if they are mainly influenced by the nationality of
the parent firm, its values and methods, even in the subsidiaries. They are also said to be so if managers
who all have the same nationality as that of the firm clearly dominate.
6
development, and that the assignment to key positions of managers issued from the parent
country was still the most widespread behavior.

When confronted with this limited success in international career management, one may
have several attitudes. One may for example consider that one of the following statements
is true:
- the development of international career management takes time. It is still a recent
process. The only response is persistence.
- the methods used in international career management have limited success because the
human resource specialists (human resource managers, management development staff
specialists) have insufficient power. The response is then to strengthen their prerogatives
and decision rights in the interest of the corporation.
- the methods used in international career management have limited success because of the
line managers. These managers cause the international career and transfer process to drift
because they push for their parochial interests, or because they are insufficiently conscious
of the necessity of coherence at the global corporate level. The response is then to increase
controls, or to educate line managers.
- the problem comes from the commonly accepted methods themselves. They should be
improved or replaced.

As we shall see in the next paragraph, all these attitudes and responses have a common
underlying feature: they are all biased towards the representation of any organized system
as a set of procedures designed to reach clear objectives (we call them "finalized
procedures" in what folllows). We do not agree with this position, both on empirical and
on theoretical grounds. The consequence, if we are right, if indeed organizations are more
than finalized procedures, is that none of the above practical responses is likely to ever
succeed. We need to change the organization model we use to find effective action tools.


2) Changing the organization theory used in practice.
Simon (1957) has shown long ago that every individual has bounded rationality. Imperfect
knowledge and information, as well as limited information processing capacities, lead the
individual to work with simplified representations of the world since the world is too
complex to be dealt with in all its aspects. Argyris and Schon (1978) expressed the same
idea in other words, observing that every member of every organization has theories in
use, i.e. simplified models concerning the functioning of the organization, of competitors,
of clients, etc., which he uses as tools when making his decisions. Using a metaphor, we
can say that actors in the firm use maps to orient themselves since the territory is too
complex. This fundamental idea applies in particular to executives and managers involved
in international career and transfer decisions.

Researchers, consultants, and managers alike often equate what is "organized" with what
functions with finalized procedures, with very stringent additional conditions:
- procedures are designed to reach one or several clearly specified objectives which are
accepted by everyone.
- procedures are implemented by all the managers who should participate in their
functioning. And all of them, while applying the procedures, work by the rule and push in
the direction of the objectives.

7
The preceding representation on how to manage and how to organize is pervasive in the
management tools presented in books and research papers on international career
management.

In our opinion, managers using the above organization theory may, precisely because of
this theory, be unable to reach their own objectives. In the terms of the metaphor above,
they cannot reach their destination because they are using a wrong map, because they
ignore behavior and actions which exist apart from procedures. It is significant that this
behavior and these actions are often labelled informal, irrational, inefficient, or counter-
productive because they should not be there, i.e. because they are abnormal within the
currently held organization theory. However, as we shall see later with many empirical
examples, this behavior and these actions are there and, further, they are frequently
predictable. It thus makes sense to try to change the organization theory in use instead of
continuing to try to enforce the map upon the territory with predictibly limited success.
This observation has been made long ago by Crozier and Friedberg (1980) with their
concept of "concrete action system". In their theory, the starting point of the organization
keeps being the formal structure made up of procedures, objectives, formal positions,
decision rules, etc. However, this is for them only a starting point. Individuals do not
always abide by the rules. Each person has preferences, affects, competencies and
interests, and hence each individual may be said to have a strategy
3
. If each individual in
the firm is an actor endowed with a strategy, then interactions between people are quasi-
negotiations. According to the authors, these negotiations lead to semi-stable behavior
which is often markedly different from the one prescribed by procedures. The set of all
semi-stable behavior may be called the real organization. The real organization depends
on the formal one, since the latter moulds the opportunities and constraints. But the two are
different since each actor may develop some independent behavior.
To summarize Crozier and Friedberg's position, one can say that the formal organization is
different from the real one, and that the real organization is managed on the basis of power
relations where each actor tries to defend or increase his margin of autonomy. If this is
true, then acting on the sole basis of procedures may be inefficient: the real organization
will adapt to the new conditions, but there is no guarantee that the new formal organization
will be more faithfully respected than the old one was. A much better management attitude
consists in computing the change in the formal organization to induce the desired change
in the real organization. Unfortunately, no technology has been developed so far to
perform such a task. Hence we shall keep Crozier and Friedberg theory in mind, since it
has been proved empirically to be valid, but we shall have to turn to other organization
theories if we want to obtain practical management tools.

The general framework we have about organization theory is the following:
1) all actions and all decisions have the same logical structure, and this applies in
particular to each international promotion or transfer decision. Each action is composed of
a standard set of interrelated elements (see Annex 2), and hence we may name it action
system or decision process.
2) we call "activity system" on a given management domain (for example on international
career management, on maintenance, etc.) the set of all actions related to the domain, in
the firm as a whole, as well as in units of the firms like divisions and Sales departments.
We thus will have an international career management activity system, a maintenance

3
The term strategy should be used with precaution. In Crozier and Friedberg, the actors' strategy is most of
the time unconscious. It is simply the (semi -stable) way in which the individual reacts to constraints and
seizes opportunities he perceives.
8
activity system, etc. The activity system for a given management domain is by definition
composed of the same types of elements used for the actions in the activity system. The
notion of activity system goes beyond the mere agregation of actions related to the same
domain. The fact that a set of actions and decisions are all related to the same domain
creates links between them: they often are accomplished by the same people, use the same
resources and competencies, suffer the same constraints, and actors involved in them often
(explicitly or implicitly) compare their structures and results.
3) each activity system can be said to be "organized" if one of the two following conditions
holds true. Condition 1 is that there exists a sufficient amount of observable regularities
between the various actions of the same activity system within one firm (careers of various
managers, diverse circumstances and forces that help explain and justify promotion and
transfer decisions). Condition 2 is that there exist sufficient observable regularities
concerning the same activity system in different firms (career management in GE and 3M
for example).
4) we shall not suppose that power mechanisms are the only forces influencing what
happens in an organization. This position is held as an axiom by Crozier and Friedberg.
We think that other motivations may have to be taken into account, and that only empirical
observation can tell which motivations are active in a given decision situation.
5) we think that every observed regularity has to be explained by reference to the logic of
the activity system (see Annex 2), or by the interaction between several activity systems.
Research then begins with the observation of regularities, and continues with the
development and testing of hypotheses on the activity system(s) in which these regularities
can be seen as natural.
6) we think that when the researcher cannot use any general theory, as is the case for the
present research topic, his only choice is to modelize real situations. We thus join here the
epistemological position developped by James March in his research (Romelaer, 1994).
The general framework about organization theory we presented above has to be used when
models of organization already developed may not be readily used
4
.

If we adopt the above definitions, then:
- every organization is composed of action systems and of activity systems in domains
such as sales communication, budget, maintenance, international career management,
etc.
- each person in the firm generally belongs in several action systems and activity systems,
- each action system and each activity system has its own logic, which partly imposes itself
onto the actors. This logic is based on finalized procedures in some instances, but not
in all cases: only the observation can tell.
We shall keep in what follows the perspective developed above, which is both
"behavioral" and "structuralist". In the next section we present the garbage-can model, and
empirical reasons why it is a good candidate to depict international careers and transfers.
Then we present the empirical observations made in several firms, and show that they
validate the model. In the last section we may then propose management tools and
methods which are in line with the garbage-can model. These are likely to be more
effective than traditional management tools since they are based on a more accurate map
of the world of international careers and transfers.

4
Twelve models of organization are contained in the organization theory developed by Mintzberg (1979),
and modified by Romelaer (2002c). All these models refer to organizations and organizational situations
where actors who influence the main directions are fairly concentrated and fairly well organized. Since this
condition is not fulfilled in international promotion and transfer decisions, we cannot use this organization
theory here.
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3) The "garbage-can" model
One may feel that it is normal or desirable for an organization or an action system to
function as a set of finalized procedures clearly and identically understood by all the
actors, and implemented by the book by everyone. However, observation shows that
organizations sometimes do not function this way and are nevertheless efficient.

A model for such organizations, the garbage-can model, has been developed on the basis
of empirical observations (Cohen, March and Olsen, 1972; March and Olsen, 1976;
March, 1988) to account for apparently chaotic situations in which there exist enough
observable regularities. These situations are not organized in the usual sense of the word
(finalized procedures), but regularities are enough in number and frequency to allow them
to be called organized action systems with the definition presented above
5
.

The garbage-can model has limited validity. It applies only when the three following
conditions are sufficiently present:
C1 preferences are unsure: either the decision-maker has fuzzy preferences, or his
preferences change over time, or else there exist several decision-makers (we can call them
"actors") whose preferences are not mutually coherent.
C2 technology is unsure: the links between the "input" and the "output" of the decision -
making process are not well understood. The consequences of actions can be forecast with
limited precision.
C3 participation fluctuates: actors' implication in the decision-making process fluctuates
over time. For those who participate, the intensity of participation varies. It may be that the
definition of who can participate is not precise. The decision is like a stage on which actors
enter and which actors leave rather freely.

When these three conditions hold overall, the functioning of the organization is rather
peculiar. A description of the garbage-can model can be found in March (1988) and in
March and Olsen (1976). The latter reference containing numerous empirical examples.
Out of this rich material, it is sufficient here to say that garbage-can decision processes
have twenty-one characteristics, presented in Figure 1 below.

Observations made by one of the authors (see Annex 1) show that the three conditions
above seem to hold rather well for international career and transfer decisions:
C1: Some firms have changing objectives with respect to international career
management. They may start with the objective of competence transfer, and later on move
to the wish to integrate subsidiaries. In our clinical research, we observed that managers in
subsidiaries feel that they lack information about the headquaters' strategic vision
concerning international career management. Some also feel unsure about the degree to
which headquarters is committed to develop international careers.

5
To know whether a system is organized or not thus depends on the definition of the word organized.
Hence the controversies on the value of the garbage-can model. Eisenhardt et Zbaracki (1992), as well as
Friedberg (1993) dismiss the validity of the model. In our view, such dismissal only comes from their
definition of the notion of organization (see Romelaer, 1994:58, on this question). Empirical validations of
the garbage-can model have been presented in publications such as March and Olsen (1976), Laroche
(1991), and Smith and Zeithaml (1996), in various settings such as the functioning of the top management
group of a geophysics firm, the internationalization of a telecommunications firm, and the functioning of
educational institutions. The present paper offers its own empirical validation in still another area.
10

Figure 1
Characteristics of garbage-can decision processes

The following is a list of 21 characteristics which have been empirically observed at least
once as present in garbage can situations. The list is adapted from Romelaer (1994), and
issued from a content analysis of publications such as March and Olsen (1976) and March
(1988). We show in paragraph 3 that almost all these characteristics are frequently, if not
always, present in the set of international career and transfer decisions we examined.

1 One initially negative decision can become positive when circumstances change.
2 A decision may have several meanings and objectives. Each objective may also be
pursued through means other than the decision.
3 Each decision crucially depends on the actors' contact structure.
4 Diagnosis and decision routines are sometimes used outside the context for which they
were designed.
5 In some cases, some people who participate in a decision because of their position are in
fact not strongly involved.
6 Some people have no formal reason to participate in a decision, but nevertheless get
involved.
7 Each actor's participation in the decision process may fluctuate over time.
8 The data relevant for any one decision are of an uncertain nature, or else what is relevant
varies according to the different actors.
9 The meaning of a decision is controversially interpreted.
10 The search for solutions is often made by repeating known solutions, by looking for
solutions in the immediate vicinity of known solutions, or by calling upon individuals
existing in the decision-makers' immediate vicinity.
11 Decision-makers' preferences over the same decision, or over various decisions, are
uncertain and/or fluctuate.
12 Decision-makers and actors can get involved in a decision without clear preferences, in
order to explore the environment and to discover their own preferences.
13 In some cases, the decision attracts people who push for ready-made solutions to other
problems.
14 The generation of alternatives in a decision depends on the access structure of the
decision: who is informed, who can get involved, who must get involved.
15 All the actors who can be involved in the decision process are not in fact involved,
because they are busy elsewhere.
16 Ideologies and cultures are important factors in decisions. Examples are top
management declarations and subsidiaries' cultures.
17 The structure of the external field of forces is also a factor influencing the decision.
18 In some cases a decision which has been approved can be reversed. Each decision
represents a time slice within a process of which the beginning and end points are not
clearly observable.
19 Some decisions mainly have a symbolic function.
20 Being involved in a decision is also a power signal. Some actors want to be part of the
process even if the question per se has no particular importance for them.
21 Each decision is the product of the encounter, at the time of the decision itself, of the
then existing problems, solutions, actors and choice situations. Each decision strongly
depends on the nature of local conditions at decision time and place.


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Beyond this, human resource managers hold multiple objectives (managerial and financial
control, diffusion of common values, management development) which are not always
coherent with the line managers' objectives. For example the latter may be biased towards
short term competence tranfer. Missions are sometimes ill-defined, and preferences
discovered after action has taken place.

C2: The impact of international transfer and promotion decisions is far from certain
ex ante. The evaluation is particularly difficult when the objective is the diffusion of
organizational values: transmitting a culture is no easy feat, it is not amenable to direct
manipulation. The more intangible the objective, the more skeptical one can be about the
direct and "measurable" effects of the international promotion or transfer decision.

C3: The decision-makers are relatively well identified in the formal organization of
international careers: hierarchy, management development specialists, headquarters'
human resource management people, corporate management, and the manager himself.
Observation shows that the participation of these various actors nevertheless
fluctuates. Moreover, some persons who have no formal legitimacy for participating in the
decision process can be found to be involved. It is common to observe that each actor's
participation also fluctuates because he or she is momentarily busy on other tasks.
Aside from these features, we also observed that the set of candidates to international
transfers fluctuates, and that some managers who had declared that they would appreciate
a change of country may withdraw for fortuitous reasons.

The analysis above establishes the garbage-can model as a good candidate to explain
international career and transfer decisions. This is of course so far only a hypothesis. To
test it, one can think of measuring to what degree each of the 21 characteristics of Table 1
above are present in all decisions relative to international careers within one firm. Such
testing requires a specific research, yet to be done.
With more limited ambition, we can think of using the wealth of observations gathered by
one of the authors (see Annex 1).
The observations can be scanned to see whether the 21 characteristics are present or not in
the data. This program is pursued in the next section.


4) Data on international career management validate the
garbage-can model.
We present below empirical data showing that almost all of the 21 characteristics of the
garbage can model are present in the international career and transfer decisions we
examined. The numbering is as in Table 1. We shall use ICD as an acronym for
"international career decision". The data we used are presented in Annex 1.

1- One initially negative ICD (international career decision) can become positive
when circumstances change. In other words, the decision depends on the encounter
between an intention and a situation. In some cases, the problem goes from one choice
situation to the next without ever resulting in a decision.
The analysis of our in-depth interviews shows that it is frequent for choice situations
which are not linked to the international careers action system nevertheless to have an
impact on ICDs:
12
- My transfer to Great Britain was context-driven. It was linked to my union mandate.
Someone had thought that things would go better if I was momentarily off the French
scene. My mission (industrial assistance) was nevertheless concrete and operational.

- I was transferred to Africa because some people did not want me to become a
regional manager in France. It was an elegant way out of the problem... I ended up
creating the subsidiary's sales structure.

2- An international career may have several meanings (managerial and/or financial
control, diffusion of common values, ...). As an example, the assistant to the production
manager in one of our firms was sent to Great Britain to hold an industrial position, but
also to play an interface role between headquarters and the subsidiary. Beyond these two
objectives, the international assignment was considered as a training in his personal
development. In our data, young engineers are sent abroad because of their "advanced
technical expertise", but also to diffuse French working methods. This feature is present in
all our cases.
Each of the above objectives may also be pursued through means other than
international career decisions. Managerial control can also be attained through the
implementation of formal procedures (reporting, strategic planning, capital budgeting,
etc.). The diffusion of an organizational culture can also use "quasi-mobility" tools as an
alternative to ICDs: some of the personnel managers we interviewed told us they were
increasing short length missions, international travel, conferences, team work, the use of
this set of tools being facilitated by recent technological developments like intranet,
teleconferencing and the cost of air transportation.

3- Each international career decision crucially depends on the actors' contact
structure.
This is illustrated by convergent and quasi-unanimous comments by our interviewees:
- For my assignment in Africa, I was coopted by the former boss I had had in France.
He then held a position in the subsidiary.

- The French sales manager, whom I knew well, asked me to come and help him in
Spain. It has been a cooptation.

- They thought of me for the position because I had left good memories in Spain during
my former mission.

5- In some cases, people whose function formally specifies that they take part to
international career decisions indeed participate in the decision process, but are not
strongly involved.
Management development specialists and human resource directors are natural actors in
the international career decisions, but in our cases it very often appears that they are not
much involved in the origin of the decision:
- Line managers express a need, and negotiations take place between line people. The
human resource department is involved for the simulation of financial packages.

- The human resource director is only the logistics which follows the decision.

- The human resource director's roles are advice, suggestions, and information
transmission. But even this does not preclude short-circuits.
13

6- Some people have no formal reason to participate in a decision, but nevertheless
get involved.
In one of our cases some people take responsabilities in decision without being asked for.
Such is the case for the French Assistant Production Manager in the British subsidiary,
who is unofficially consulted and hence influences decisions concerning tranfers to this
subsidiary. Such is also the case when a manager says that his name was proposed by his
predecessor in the position he holds. This person did not belong to the set of people
formally in charge of transfer decisions.
Human resource managers very often speak about the "organizational mess" arising from
local initiatives, when line managers launch transfers without informing the central
corporate coordination structure
6
.

7- Each actor's participation in the ICD process may fluctuate over time.
Line managers are often present when the transfer is initiated, the personnel and
management development people being then less involved. This order is reversed when the
expatriate comes back: human resource people are then the main actors in finding a
position for the returning manager. The importance of this organizational behavior varies
across the firms in our sample.

8- The decision-makers may be unsure of the data and criteria relevant for one ICD.
Or else what is relevant varies according to different actors.
For example, the foreign language criterion does not have the same salience for the various
actors. A manager sent abroad may feel that it is necessary to master perfectly the host
country's language before the beginning of her mission, but her boss may be more
concerned with rapidly transfering competencies to the British subsidiary to fill a short
term technical gap. Numerous managers we interviewed expressed surprise with the
selection criteria:
- I was surprised to see that there are no selection criteria based on language.

British managers ask themselves questions and do not understand the organizational logic:
- in Africa, some positions are set aside for French managers. But English-speaking
people are requested for these missions. It is totally absurd to teach English to French
managers within the British subsidiary rather than recruit a British manager directly!

9- The meaning of ICDs is interpreted in different ways by different people. There
may exist controversies on the meaning of one ICD.
Actors in the field may be unsure of how to interpret a given ICD, or ICDs in general. In
some cases one i nterpretation ends up becoming the agreed upon truth, through a process
in which psycho-sociological or organizational mechanisms play an important role. The
persons who control or influence the interpretation of past ICDs have great power. The
organizational history (both mythic and "real") is key to the understanding of decision
situations and choices.
Organizational motivations are several and vary from one actor to another: a subsidiary
may consider that the arrival of an expatriate represents a desire headquarters has to
control them or to "spy" on them, when this assignment is presented at headquarters as
competence transfer or as industrial assistance.

6
Interestingly, the expression organizational mess is close to the expression organized anarchy coined by
March to describe organizations where garbage-can processes are frequent.
14
Likewise, the return of an expatriate may be seen by him as a "voluntary move" made
because he "no longer agreed with the local director", when corporate staff and the main
decision-makers see the same move as being made to reduce the French presence in Africa
and to favor the assignment of local managers to specific positions.

10- The search for solutions in an ICD is often made by repeating known solutions,
or by looking for possibilities in the immediate vicinity of known solutions, for
example by transfering individuals who are in the decision-makers' immediate
vicinity.
Numerous human resource managers in our observations claim that:
- When a position abroad has to be filled, the line manager generally looks around
among his closest acquaintances.
During the selection phase, we rarely observed decision-makers who extensively looked
for, and genuinely took into consideration, the application of people who had declared
themselves long in advance ready to be transferred abroad. In other words, data bases are
formal tools which are not effective, and the process used to identify candidates for a
position is not characterised by impersonal and automatic procedures. The expression used
by Daudin et al. (1991) applies very well to our observations: international career and
transfer decisions are produced by "a subtil interweaving of influence networks",
reinforced by the strong separation between "directions" and subgroups in a "Balkanized"
structure. Almost all our interviewees judge that the organization is "fragmented", and this
establishes the limited scope of the environment within which alternatives are sought.
This phenomenon is well understood by the managers working abroad: they look actively
for good reasons to justify periodical visits to headquarters in order to avoid being
forgotten:
- You have to take care of yourself, to make moves to get back on the list. Otherwise
you are far from the decision-makers, you become marginalized, and you are not on
the next organizational chart.

- When I came back from Japan, I had by chance a talk with the Management
Development Director about my professional future. It took place over lunch in the
company cafeteria. The very same afternoon I was called by the Assistant General
Manager's secretary: he wanted to see me about this new assignment in Great Britain.

11- Decision-makers' preferences over the same ICD, or over various ICDs, are
uncertain and/or fluctuating.
Our interviews with expatriates often substantiate the phenomenon described above:
- I hold a "logistics pilot" position in Great Britain, but the mission is ill-defined. I
think I am essentially here to facilitate the relations with the factories.

- Now that I have mastered the language and become fully operational, I have to come
back to France prematurely because someone has recently decided to favor the
assignment of local people to this type of position.

12- Decision-makers and actors can get involved in an ICD without clear preferences,
in order to explore the environment and to discover their own preferences.
The above phenomenon is illustrated by converging comments of our interviewees on
organizational logic:
- My coming here is a consequence of conjunctural facts linked to the will to begin
developing the exchange of managers.
15

- Personnel management was organizing exchanges, and it is within this context I was
sent. But no one told me what I was really expected to achieve.

- There may exist an underlying will to develop international managers. But this is not
clearly said. People experiment, it is all trial and error.

The above phenomenon is also illustrated by converging comments of our interviewees on
their own logic:
- I went abroad on the basis of my interest for the position. But today I consider that it
was not a good thing to be expatriated at the beginning of my career: it would have
been better for me to establish first a network of relationships.

- I was not particularly keen on going, but my accepting or refusing conditioned my
future career development. Today I am happy to have developed a global vision of the
company in an exciting environment. I would be ready to be sent again.

14- The generation of alternatives in an ICD depends on the access structure of the
decision: who is informed, who can get involved, who must get involved.
The above phenomenon is illustrated by comments made by human resource managers on
the dynamics of geographical mobility and on the way transfers are initiated:
- It can come from a French initiative, where the objective is to get specific people to
move and propose them to subsidiaries. The role of human resource management is
then a role of advice and of information transmission, and the line manager, who
knows his people well, proposes this to one manager or another.

- The French line manager is generally the first to be informed when a position has to
be filled abroad in his area. He is the one who identifies the manager who, according
to him, can most likely do the job. He does that according to the person's profile and
capacity to adapt. But human resource managers, relying on data bases, try to enlarge
the set of candidates by initiating interviews with two or three other possible
candidates
7
.

15- All the actors who can be involved in the ICD process are not in fact involved,
sometimes because they are busy on other pressing or more interesting tasks.
Management development specialists and human resource management people are mainly
busy with non expatriates. Hence, as we observed rather often, the personnel function is
not involved in all transfer decisions, and the comeback process is a painful experience for
some managers.
- When I came back from Chile, it was a surrealistic situation. I was told: "You are
already back?"

- The coming back was surrealistic. I was asked to fill a form detailing my career. They
had nothing in memory.

16- Ideologies and cultures are important factors in ICDs. Top management
declarations and subsidiaries' cultures play important roles.

7
This method is probably not very efficient since the selected people are not part of the decision-maker's
vicinity. Methods to increase the legitimacy of such candidates in the eyes of the manager are presented in
the next section.
16
International career decisions depend on the general strategic intent developed by top
managers, and on the perception they have of various markets. When the objective is to
integrate foreign subsidiaries into a network, the mobility objectives normally take this
into account. They must be interpreted within the context of informal coordination
processes (diffusion of values, personnel exchanges, etc.). We observed in our empirical
research that Quality Management positions in foreign subsidiaries are systematically
filled by French nationals in order to obtain equivalent quality levels everywhere in
Europe, and to diffuse "some industrial values which are special to our company".
Beyond this, mobility strongly depends on the level of participation subsidiary managers
have in the definition of local requirements. Two factors strongly influence the mission's
success and the expatriate's integration: the degree with which the local socio-political
environment and culture is taken into account, and the good or bad understanding of the
local context by headquarters. When problems are met in these areas, one observes
withdrawals, absence of confidence, and information retention from subsidiaries which
want to keep some independence.
The factors taken into account are not only technical and economic. We also observed that
the calling of an expatriate to Africa by the local African top manager may result from
internal questions: his only objective may be to prevent the nomination of a member of an
ethnic group considered undesirable.
The type of factors described above are present in all the cases we observed.

17- The structure of the external field of forces is also a factor influencing ICDs.
As a single example, we shall mention the important role host country's government may
have. In some African countries, the nomination of expatriates is subject to the Ministry of
Interior's approval. The need for expatriates is not only a technical question. It is also the
product of a power game between local and French authorities. Some of our former
expatriates thus told us that:
- People have been sent back when the government all of a sudden decided that there
would exist a quota for the positions held by expatriates.

18- In some cases an international career decision which has been approved can be
reversed. Each ICD represents a time slice within a process which beginning and end
points are not clearly observable.
The following declaration of an expatriate illustrates the point:
- It is not agreeable when you are told two months before the due date that you are no
longer going. There exist some fishy processes going on. The management of the whole
thing is opportunistic, it depends on budget discussions with not so stable countries in
a moving environment .
This type of observation is not made in many of our cases.

19- Some international career decisions mainly have a symbolic function.
The "intrusion" of an expatriate in a position which was formerly the "monopoly" of local
nationals is in our data a very common illustration. In one of the multinationals we
analyzed, the position of production manager was historically filled by a British national,
but few months ago a Frenchman was nominated there. This "revealed" an ever more
voluntary integration policy by headquarters. Beyond this specific case, the first exchanges
of managers, even if they involve only very small numbers, have the same symbolic
overtone:
17
- The Spanish executives have developed the view that the need exists to send Spanish
managers in France on a reciprocity argument, essentially because there are already
many French managers in Spain.

20- Being involved in an international career decision is also a power signal. Some
actors want to be part of the process even if the question per se has no particular
importance for them.
Some of the organization members are seen as involving themselves unofficially in some
ICDs, and giving their thoughts on the candidate(s), either out of interest for personnel
management questions, or moved by the will to enlarge their area of influence. They
participate in the negotiations with the local personnel manager because they already have
connections in the subsidiary. As a consequence, local decision-makers are unsure about
the power distribution and have problems understanding:
- The process is informal, and the French Director of Management Development is
always short-circuited by a person here, a French national by the way, who has no
official role in these questions. This happens simply because this person decides to get
involved in human resources and mobility matters.
This type of observation was mainly done in our clinical research. We have no
observations of this kind in our other cases.

21- Each international career decision is the product of the partly chance encounter
of the problems, solutions, actors and choice situations which exist at the time of
decision. Each ICD strongly depends on the nature of local conditions at the decision
time and place.
This phenomenon, central to the functioning of garbage-can decision processes, is present
in all our observations. The examples below come from our interviews with expatriates:
- I never said I wanted to go abroad. The opportunity creates the opportunist.

- The first expatriation opportunity came about in a quite unexpected way. I was given
one week-end to decide.

- You have to be available at the right time. Beyond this I had a big credit to repay and
I needed money.

- I had never formally expressed the desire to be sent abroad. It was all unexpected. I
was walking down the corridor at the right time. I have been given one week to decide
whether I accepted.

To summarize the above presentation of empirical evidence, we see that 19 out of the
21 phenomena identified as characteristics of garbage-can decision processes are
present in our observations of international career and transfer decisions, 12 of them
being observed frequently or in all cases.

Scientific validity of the above conclusion can be appreciated on the following grounds:
- first, it is proved without any doubt that the phenomenon is real:
- we have numerous data: for the present paper, we re-analysed the content of 91 semi-
structured interviews (15 of them in different companies, and 76 in the same
industrial group for our clinical analysis. See Annex 1).
- biographical data and interviews with all the actors involved cross-validate each
other. This convergence confirms that our approach corresponds to "reality".
18
- our observations were made in a research which objective was not to test the model.
Hence the research itself gave us the opportunity to discover alternative
explanations if such explanations existed.
- second, our conclusions underestimate the phenomenon observed. Since the objective of
the research was not to test the validity of the garbage-can model, some of our
interviewees may have met some of the garbage-can characteristics without mentioning
them.
- third, our conclusions are imprecise for the three reasons below:
- for each of the characteristics studied, the estimate of the frequency is intuitive; this
estimate can be made precise with counting the average number of quotations
pertaining to each characteristic in each interview, counting for each characteristic
the proportion of interviews in which it is present, and proceeding to an assessment
by several judges of the importance of each characteristic in each decision situation.
We thought however it was not necessary here to use these methods, because it
would only give a better precision on data which in all cases will remain imprecise
because they were not specifically collected for the testing of the garbage-can
model.
- we do not know whether the cases on which we have data are a representative sample
of the international career and transfer decisions in the firms we studied.
- even if we observed many regularities in the actors discourse, we could not obtain
full access to the origin of decisions, nor to the complete set of discussions and
informal negociations.

Data and analyses not presented here show that there exist some differences between
international career and transfer decisions and the "pure" garbage-can model. Clanic
behavior has more importance here, as can be seen in a detailed analysis of clinical data on
the headquarters-subsidiaries relations
8
. As a consequence, it is easier to identify the
actors, and the coalitions are more stable in the ICDs settings than in the generic garbage-
can model. For this reason condition C3 above is only partially valid. If stable clans had
been the rule in our observations, we would have had to use the Crozier-Friedberg
organization theory to account for the data. But differences with a stable clans model are
sufficiently strong here to prevent us from having to do so. Chance, the weight of cultures
and representations, the variation of coalitions as a function of locally prevailing
conditions are important factors. And these are not compatible with a Crozier-Friedberg
model.

We thus can say that the garbage-can model is strongly, if partially, validated by our data.



8
See Huault (1994) for details.
19
5) Tools for international career management
Managing international careers can partly be done through the use of the classical methods
presented in Paragraph 1. But we saw that these methods often have had rather
dissappointing performance. We can know understand why these methods have a limited
impact: because international career and transfer decisions are of the garbage-can type, it
follows that attention structures, informal communications, cultures, and variable local
power structures are crucial elements in the management of such decision situations
9
.

Every finalized procedure will by necessity function only partially, and solutions that come
to mind within the classical organizational paradigm will necessary be disappointing.
But the garbage-can model itself suggests some action, tools and methods human resource
managers may use to be more effective in international career and transfer decisions.

Managing the attention structure in specific decisions

Herbert Simon (1997:357-358) advises researchers to study human attention and shifts of
attention empirically in order to develop a theory of individual and social determinants of
focus of attention. The same advice can be given to managers.
The attention structure is managed through the diffusion to interested parties of
information helping their decision-making, for example information on the existence of
position openings, on the characteristics of people sought for, on the profile of potential
candidates. Interested parties are primarily line managers. Sometimes the information is
also made available to possible candidates to a position abroad. This information should be
as complete, relevant and objective as is possible, and it should be transmitted as rapidly as
can be.
In classical organization theory, such information diffusion may be done through formal
data bases which line managers are advised to use, or which they are free to use as they
wish. In a garbage-can context, one should have no illusion on the frequency of
consultation of such bases by people who have many other concerns on their "decisional
agenda". Other management tools are probably much more adapted to the garbage can
nature of the situation.
For example, when an international position has to be filled, human resource managers can
directly inform a selected set of individuals whom they would like to be part to the
decision (1) either because they have good quality information, or (2) because they can
give legitimacy to a solution, or (3) because it is known that they will be inclined to
intervene in the decision even if formal procedures do not specify that they have a role in
it. The assignment to a position in maintenance in Spain may for example be of interest to
informal leaders in the maintenance area in France, and some people in Great Britain may
be useful because their competence in maintenance is recognized in the firm. These
persons may be made part of the process without having to participate in meetings or even
to be made officially decision-makers. They can be asked to phone the main decision-
makers and present their views on the assignment criteria. They can also suggest
candidates since they are probably the people who have the most frequent contacts with
employees on maintenance matters: these working contacts give them an extensive living
knowledge of employees' real capacities in this area
10
.

9
The importance of these elements can be seen in March (1988).
10
The informants contacted may also of course include people who know well the culture and needs of the
subsidiary or department where the job opening is located.
20
The set of people dealing with each international career and transfer decision is thus
potentially enriched and tailored to needs: people to be contacted can be very specific to
the decision presently considered. The debate on specific decisions is hence made more
intense, a type of debate considered by some as easier and more productive than the debate
on "grand" questions like a priori criteria for candidate selection (Mintzberg, 1994).
Given the garbage-can nature of the decision, the informal management method
described above will probably have much more practical and immediate consequences
than the classical data base on position openings and on candidates' profiles. There are
many reasons for this:
- line managers looking for candidates have a tendency to rely much more on personal
contacts than on formal systems such as data bases. As established by Mintzberg (1973),
80% of their work day is spent in direct contacts with people, and at any given time they
have dozens of things on their agenda: hence they look for quick personalized information,
and the data bases cannot provide it. For example the bland candidates profile contained
in a data base are much less believed than information on candidates verbally transmitted
today by a trusted informant.
- the base cannot contain the rich qualitative information needed in such contextual
decisions.
- the updating of such bases is notoriously difficult. People called upon to do it do not have
the time, and deciding a list of people formally entrusted with the updating deprives the
base of necessary information: who are the best informants probably depends on specific
decisions and varies too rapidly to allow the list of base's informants to keep being
relevant.
Due to the above reasons, data bases on careers and transfers are notoriously expensive to
create, difficult to maintain, and not very much used by line managers. This does not
mean, naturally, that the informal management method presented above solves all
problems and may be used without precaution
11
. The human resource manager who
chooses to operate this way also remains conscious that he or she pilots the process only
partially. But such modesty is of necessity in all garbage-can situations. We join here the
comment made by Edgar Morin: "when someone undertakes an action, he can control the
action at the outset, but the action thereafter escapes his will because it enters the game of
interactions and of retro-actions specific to the milieu in which it takes place" (1994:14).


11
Two such precautions may be worth mentioning.
First it should not be understood that the method we presented requires that a human resource manager or a
line manager calls all interested competent persons. It may be that some people would like to be part of the
decision and that they would probably push for a solution considered contrary to the personnel manager's
objectives or interests. The manager may then consiously omit to contact them, and even contact several
additional people in favor of his solution to neutralize the potential opponents in case they intrude the
decision (remember that participation is fluid in garbage can situations).
Second, people who are contacted during the informal consultations we mentioned will not only bring
information. They will also, implicitly or explicitly, bring their own decision criteria and values. For example
an informant will probably not mention a person who would be a good candidate for the maintenance job in
Spain, if he thinks that this person is necessary for him in Germany. Multiplying informal contacts alleviates
this problem, albeit only partially.
21
Managing the global attention structure of the firm

In order to manage the attention structure more globally, the human resource manager or
the management development specialist may push executives to publicly defend positions
and principles on international career management. The symbolic importance of such
declarations was identified by Huault (1994).
Another piece of advice is to devote a lot of energy to push executives to wield all their
weight in favor of symbolically important career and tranfer decisions: the first assignment
of a German in Spain, the nomination of a French in a job previously considered the
monopoly of local nationals, the first assignment of a foreign Quality Advisor in a
subsidiary which does not consider it needs advice on quality, etc.
This method must be used with utmost precaution and finesse to avoid backlash. A
symbolic transfer must be avoided if the risk is high to see many people attracted to
participate in the decision (remember that participation is fluid). The worst that can happen
is to see such decision, visibly endorsed by an executive, fail because the transferee has an
inadequate performance. Failure can happen if the way the transferee is "welcomed" in his
new job does not permit him to have adequate performance. Of course the risk is
significant for the transferee. But what is also important, and maybe even more important,
is the risk incurred by the human resource manager who has convinced the executive to
publicly endorse a "looser". The relationship and confidence between the two may be
strongly and durably strained, thus impairing the human resource manager's impact on all
future international career decisions. As observed by March and Romelaer (1976) in an
other context, it may be wiser to make the decision less visible.
We conclude that obtaining a symbolically important international transfer with top
management support may be considered in two conditions: either when the decision is
prepared by several less visible decisions (it then appears as a confirmation); or when
success can be obtained by the energetic push of a winning coalition (a local and
temporary coalition of course, since we are in garbage-can conditions). The risk of a
future backlash will probably have to be controlled through the close monitoring of the
welcome given to the transferee, jointly done over a few months by the personnel manager
and by an operational manager.

I ncreasing the number of solutions

In garbage-can situations, alternatives are often sought for in the immediate vicinity of the
decision-makers: the line manager who has to decide often thinks of individuals he knows
on a personal basis, with whom he has worked, who have helped him in the past, or who
are members of his "clan" (i.e. the group of people he knows, trusts, and controls). But
when the decision is taken on this basis, it reinforces already existing links and clanic
behavior. The situation may even progressively drift to what could be called partial
necrosis: clans are closed groups in competition with each other, engineering or
business schools have de facto monopoly on some positions, groupthink becomes the
norm (Janis, 1972) and no new point of view may enter the corporate vision, etc. Jackal
(1988) thus vividly describes a chemical firm in which any managers' career is tightly
controlled for decades by the executive who recruited him or her.
A human resource manager working in such a setting may think that the contact networks
are not varied enough, and that they exclude potentially good candidates from international
assignments.
"Opening the game" in such conditions can be done through multiplying contact
opportunities. Three methods are presented below:
22
1) create multifunctional and/or multinational work-groups and project-groups on topics
such as new products, technical problems, knowledge of a clientele segment, etc. This
method was used by the executives interviewed by Doz and Pralahad (1987).
2) create seminars where the audience is composed of persons coming from different
countries, nationalities, and functional specialties. Or having corporate executives give
conferences to such groups, which adds the possibility of diffusing corporate values and
knowledge. This method was used by Kodak Europe some years ago. Many data we
gathered on continuing education for executives and high potential managers, as well as on
continuing education on management topics, show that getting participants to develop
more connections in the firm is an important objective of the programs (Romelaer et al.,
1996, de Montmorillon et al., 1997)
3) create thematic forums in which juniors are called upon to present projects and
achievements, like the Bell and Howell's "technology forums" described in Fellowes and
Frey (1988). Such forums give to more numerous potential candidates the opportunity to
develop visibility with an increased number of executive, who some day in the future, may
be in a position to be part to international assignments decisions.
The forums should keep having normal activity (producing, selling, etc.) as their main
objective. They should definitely avoid being mainly devoted to successive presentations
of their work made by junior managers and other personnel to an audience composed of
executives and high potentials managers, with the purely social objectives of developing
contacts and visibility: such method would give the forum a "cattle market" outlook
12
.

The three methods described above are in line with the standard improved divisionalized
structures described in Romelaer (2002c). They seek to enlarge the set of potential
candidates to international assignments who will be "naturally" considered by decision-
makers because the human resource people have so organized things that both groups have
become acquainted
13
.
The performance of these tools may be measured by noting down in a data base the
participation of juniors in forums, workgroups and seminars, and by verifying that each
potentially promising person has at least once every two years the opportunity to increase
his or her visibility with executives and other people formally making the international
career and transfer decisions. Of course, as a final comment, these methods have only a
medium to long term impact. No sizable effect should be expected from them in less than
one or two years.

12
The purely social objective of getting executives and high potentials to make more contacts with managers
and other personnel may be pursued through still other management methods, organizing parties for
example. In our opinion, doing some work together should be more effective than purely social encounters
alone. And joining the two is probably even better, as is currently done in social activities planned during
residential seminars or after workgroup meetings.
13
The methods we mentioned have many effects other than increasing the number of solutions in
international career and transfer decisions. See some of them in Romelaer (1997) and in Desreumaux and
Romelaer (2001). Using these methods should not be done without taking these other effects into account.
23
Reconnecting human resource specialists (1) informal means

Our data and conceptual model show that the three types of management methods we
mentioned so far
14
are by no means sufficient if the human resource managers are
informed too late or are rarely brought into the game by line executives. And the risk is not
negligible, since Huault (1994) observed that it is frequent that "line managers
communicate together without informing the local, or even the central, human resource
structure".
This behavior of line managers can be modified. Of course, they will always behave at
least partly in this way, if only to maintain some independence with respect to human
resource staff and with respect to headquarters. But on the other hand, this behavior also
develops because questions concerning international careers and transfers may be dealt
with during chance contacts between line managers who meet or phone each other on
other topics (because they have to discuss a budget, because they are attending a meeting
on new products, because they have lunch together, because they meet in the corridor), at a
time which cannot be forecast and when the human resource manager is not around
15
. As
Mintzberg often observed (1973, 1994) the manager functions "in real time" and through
interactions.
To fight this disconnection from real time information, human resource managers have no
other choice than multiplying their contacts with managers who are in a position to
participate to decisions. They will definitely be unable to present their ideas and
preferences on international career and transfer decisions, or even to be informed that such
decisions are "cooking", if they have no frequent contacts with line managers.
Any topic on which they interact with line managers will give them the opportunity to
discuss informally, as a "side" question, of career evolution of the manager's subordinates
and of the future opening of positions that can be filled through international assignments.
If human resource managers hold a voluntary and realistic attitude in this area, then line
managers will in most cases end up consulting them and listening to their views (partially
so of course, because we are in garbage-can situations). If this be the case, then human
resource people will be as close as possible to real time information, and re-connected to
the world of action
16
.


14
These three types of methods are (1) increasing the size and variety of the (local and temporary) coalitions
dealing with each specific international career decision; (2) promoting top management declarations on
principles and their endorsing of symbolic assignments; and (3) increasing the number and variety of the
potential candidates naturally considered by decision-makers.
15
These may appear as chance contacts since one problem is solved outside its normal context. It should
be stressed that these contacts do not happen entirely by chance: encounters between people in a firm also
depend in predictible ways on the type of organization structure (Romelaer, 2000).
16
On the contrary, if they look for visibility in a classical technocratic fashion (multiplying studies, writing
manuals, developing procedures, gathering statistics, etc.), then in our opinion they will at best be tolerated,
but in no case efficient. They will naturally be able to continue complaining about line managers who do not
respect procedures and official channels, who make decisions going against the principles outlined by top
management, by the Human Resource Vice-President, and who do not inform them on matters on which they
should formally be contacted. Such complaints only reflect their lack of understanding of the fact that the
disconnection from managers is the very source of their inefficiency.
24
Reconnecting human resource specialists (2) some more formal possibilities

We stressed above the importance of increasing informal real time contacts with line
managers. Some amount of formalization may also be considered.
The human resource manager may hold one informal conversation per year with each line
manager to systematically review career evolutions of the line managers subordinates and
future opening of positions that can be filled through international assignments. Human
resource managers need to keep such conversations informal if they want to have access to
relevant data: a number of the criteria mentioned in our empirical data are so confidential
that it is absolutly unthinkable to put them in written documents. The human resource
manager who would operate this way, by inclination or because he finds this is more
convenient, simply runs the risk of failing to have the relevant information communicated
to him.


We end here our presentation of some management methods adapted to garbage-can
situations. As could be forecast, these methods contain only a small amount of controls
and procedures: in garbage-can situations, performance depends more heavily on mutual
understanding, on interaction, socialisation, and on the quality of communication. It is the
product of informal negotiation, persuasion and attention management more than it is a
"technical work which depends on ex ante and exogeneous intentions" (March, 1988).



6) Perspectives for future research
The formulation we developed in the present paper suggests some directions for future
research on the management of international careers and transfers.

a) One can think of a research specifically designed to test the applicability of the garbage-
can model to international career management. The requirements of such research have
already been outlined above:
- representativity of the set of decisions studied in each firm, and representativity of the set
of firms with respect to the population of firms in a branch or in a country.
- measure of the frequence and importance of the 21 garbage-can characteristics studied.
- assessment of the stability of the behavior studied.
- measure of the link between each of the 21 garbage-can characteristics and performance
in career management (measured for example by the satisfaction of executives, line
managers and human resource managers. Other measures may be found).

b) One can also think of a research identifying and testing contingency factors which may
influence each of the 21 characteristics, or which may influence the "degree of garbage-
canness" (if this concept exists). As example of such factors, we can think of the manager's
functional area (marketing, finance, etc.), of the type of divisions, and of the age and
extent of the firm's internationalization.
We can for example test whether garbage-can is a permanent or transitory organizational
behavior in international career management (although our data lead us to think that if it is
transitory, the "transition" is at least ten years long).

25
c) One can also think of a research identifying and testing contingency factors which may
impact on the performance in international career management. Several factors may be a
priori thought to be worth a research, such as the degree of diversification, the degree of
decentralization of the human resource function, the general degree of decentralization of
decision-making in the group, the nationality of the parent country.

To these factors we may add those mentioned above in the present paper: the variety and
number of the informal (local and temporary) coalitions around specific international
career decisions, the existence and visibility of declarations on principles made by
executives, the intensity and frequency of multinational workgroups, seminars,
conferences and forums, the intensity of use of short and medium length missions (one day
to one year), the frequency of informal communications between human resource people
and line managers, the effective existence of yearly informal conversations between line
managers and human resource specialists to review international career possibilities.



Conclusion

We have seen in this paper that the management methods one can think of depend on the
representation one holds of what is the profound nature of an organization. The numerous
empirical observations presented here may appear as pathologies if we think that an
organization is a set of finalized procedures. But they are completely natural if we think of
the international career and transfer decisions as garbage-can situations.

We have shown empirically that almost all 21 characteristics of garbage can situations are
present in our data, most of them very frequently or in all cases. The proof we presented is
strong (taking into account the number and diversity of sources), but it is still not complete
(a specific research would have had to be designed).

The validity of the garbage-can model for international career management allows us to
understand why classically proposed management methods in the field have had so far
very limited success. It also shows that firms which would keep using them would
probably continue being disappointed.

The empirical validation also leads us to suggest to line managers and to human resource
managers practically usable methods adapted to the garbage-can nature of the work to be
done, and to propose a research agenda designed to better test the model, to discover in
what contexts it represents reality, and to test the efficiency of the proposed methods.


26
Annex 1: Methodology and empirical data


Numerous data have been collected by one of the authors (Huault, 1994) in her research on
the specific impact of the European context on the management of international careers.
The empirical part of the research includes the following elements:
- a study on 15 firms of more than 2500 employees each. This study includes:
- a light exploratory study on ten French multinationals, with one 30 to 45mn semi-
structured interview in each firm. The objective was to identify the relevant
descriptors of international career decisions and international career management
systems. These descriptors were later used, joined to descriptors identified in the
research literature.
- fifteen in depth semi-structured interviews with human resource managers in
multinational firms (French or not) active in France, of more than 2500 employees
each. These interviews have been transcribed, and content-analysed on themes such
as the objectives of international career management, its processes, its dynamics, the
actors involved in international mobility, the information networks used in practice,
the difficulties met, the expatriates' profiles, etc.

- a clinical research conducted within a large French industrial group. This research
includes:
- the analysis of 75 individual cases of expatriates or former expatriates, with a battery
of descriptors including their sequence of assignments and company information on
the reasons for the moves.
- 70 semi-structured interviews, of two to four hours each, on specific international
career decisions. These interviews were conducted with present and former
expatriates, management development specialists, human resource managers, and
managers and executives in foreign subsidiaries. The number and variety of
interviewees allowed us, in the work leading to the present paper, to develop a good
grasp of the international career and transfer decisions concerning the French,
British, and Spanish subsidiaries of this industrial group.
27
Annex 2: the notions of "action system" and of "activity system"
The concepts of "action system" and of "activity system" (the first being also named
decision process) are developed by Romelaer as generic concepts to be used to describe
respectively (1) a specific action or decision, and (2) the set of all actions relative to a
same domain. For example maintenance, and international career and transfer decisions,
are activity domains interesting managers and Organization Science researchers.
In other words, we use the expression action system to remind us that each action,
however simple, is in fact composed of a standard set of elements which nature and mutual
relations influence its success. Likewise, the expression activity system is used to
indicate that all actions pertaining to a same domain of activity in fact form a system, i.e.
that they are related to each other, even if there are no formal procedures to take care of the
activity, nor any manager in charge of it.
We shall begin by giving a flavour of what the components of an activity system may be
through examples concerning international career and transfer decisions (Figure 2 below).

Figure 2
Elements of the international career and transfer activity system

- behavior and action of people in the domain, e.g. the decision to transfer a particular
marketing manager, who is a German national, from Spain to Italy,
- norms (e.g. standards to be respected, cultural norms), e.g. have all subsidiaries
general managers and finance managers come from the U.S. parent company, the
others being local people if competence allows,
- objectives, e.g. develop a uniform competence in Total Quality Management
throughout the group,
- symptoms of malfunctioning, e.g. the marketing manager we sent to Italy quit the
firm three months after he joined Milan, and we just learned that he has been
recruited by a competitor for a job in Germany,
- problems, e.g. most executives in the firm lack international experience,
- methods and procedures, e.g. give training each year in foreign languages to 20
promising managers mostly from marketing and communication technologies, then
implicate them in work-groups meeting at headquarters on international questions,
and finally select the transferees among the work-group members who
demonstrated implication and competence in group work and are cognizant of the
local language of the destination country.
- actors (individuals, groups, organizations), e.g. the Director of Management
Development at the U.S. headquarters, the Manager Human Resources in Italy, the
Director of Marketing in Spain, the transferee herself.
- languages actors use when they deal with the management domain, e.g. mentions
made using expressions like reward adaptability, or marketing competence is
low in Italy at present, during conversations about a particular transfer, or during
meetings on expatriates compensation.
- cognitive interpretations and mental map actors hold about the management domain,
about the environment and the other actors' intentions, e.g. Germans are not very
mobile, or if we send Ms X to Italy, our Italian competitor will steal her from us
since she has precisely the profile they desperately need.


28
More generally, an action system includes by definition 16 elements
17
. This standard list
of elements in an action is meant to include all which may be useful, and at times
required, in the designing, managing, performing and judging the action. Whether it is as
complete, as practical, and as conceptually economical as needed is open to debate.

Each of the elements above has some independent existence apart from the specific action
to which it belongs. And each element of the definition is needed. For example, both
maintenance problems and maintenance objectives are needed to describe a
maintenance activity system, because maintenance problems are not only situations where
maintenance performance is below maintenance objectives. The distinction between what
is a problem and what is not a problem is a social construct partly produced by the action
system. Actors may pay great attention to dysfunctions not taken into account by official
objectives and performance indicators, and conversely some of the official objectives and
norms may not be highly attended to by groups of key actors in daily practice. Another
example of the necessity of each element is the fact that the real way in which work is done
is not identical to officially prescribed procedures.

The concept of action system goes beyond the generic list of elements. Obviously all 16
elements of an action system have numerous links with each other: individuals have their
relational networks, each information and resource is unequally usable or accessible by
different people, the individual acts in a given action are well or poorly coordinated, the
action as a whole and the acts of which it is composed are more or less adapted to the
various relevant environments, the definition and enactment of these environments is more
or less influenced by the mental maps of the actors, etc. Other links exist: for example, Orr
(1990) has established for photocopy machine repair technicians the existence of a link
between the work process and the structure of the local professional language (Romelaer,
2002c, paragraph 12).
If we want to develop further the existence of links between the elements in a particular
case, we see for example that competencies include knowing a set of methods applied to
people and to objects, but that it also includes knowing which problems are likely to appear
in which circumstances (the typical situations recognized by professionals and experienced

17
These 16 elements are: (1) objectives, goals, target to be reached, zone to be attained, zones to be avoided


(2) constraints, standards, and norms, including cultural norms (3) symptoms of malfunctioning,
dysfunctions (4) problems (5) methods and procedures; these may be methods specific to the firm, imitated
from competitors, or generic methods obtained from books, research articles, or consultants (6)
competencies (7) decision rights (8) power and influence (9) motivations (10) elements of the action or of
the decision, among which are considered those concretely present and those which can be used ou could
have been used. They include objects, acts, as well as people and their behavior (11) relations between
elements of the action or of the decision as defined above (12) types of situations classically recognized or
used as a reference (13) relevant organizations and organizational coordination systems; the latter include
many elements, among which (a) management systems, (b) groups, (c) cultures, in which are included
national cultures as well as cultures of professional groups, (d) the external relations with the relevant
environments (see the complete list of coordination systems in paragraph 8 of Romelaer (2002c)) (14)
languages, including the good reasons for the action and the professional languages (15) cognitive
interpretations and mental map (16) history of the actions of the same type, history of the actions in the same
domain.
The typical situations mentioned above (n12), are used as thinking tools by managers and other actors.
They give the user a list of elements to grant systematic attention to, and a list of relations between elements
which can be used to explore the action possibilities, the opportunities and the constraints (the exploration is
more or less systematic in practice). Such models of the world are of course examples of Simon's bounded
rationality. The reasoning with typical situations is what we allude to when using the expression rationality
driven by a model (see Annex 1 in Romelaer and Lambert, 2002). It is close to the notion of toy universes
used by astrophysicists.
29
people). Competencies also include the knowledge of which actions may mitigate adverse
consequences, which problems are unavoidable, which resources are needed to deal with
ordinary situations, which symptoms should be granted attention to, how to link symptoms
to problems and to solutions, what help may be enlisted, which networks of contacts need
to be cultivated, etc
18
.
Other links exist among elements in an activity system. As we mentioned in paragraph 2,
the fact that a set of actions and decisions are all related to the same domain creates links
between them: they often are accomplished by the same people, use the same resources
and competencies, suffer the same constraints, and actors involved in them often (explicitly
or implicitly) compare their structures and results.. Because of these links, an activity
system on a management domain, be it maintenance or international careers and transfers,
can also be defined as the set of all elements which one may, or sometimes should, take
into account to predict problems, to identify opportunities, and to judge the value of
management tools. In common language, the maintenance action system in a firm is the
world of maintenance in the firm.

It is because an action is composed of interrelated elements that there exists, in each action
system and in each actitvity system, an internal logic which strongly influences the
people acting within these systems, even if they are not conscious of it.
It is also precisely because an action is composed of interrelated elements that we use the
expressions action system and decision process
19
. As a practical consequence, if a
manager or another actor contemplates a modification of one element, she has to wonder
about the possible modifications induced in the others, as well as about possible retroactive
effects (i.e. the induced modifications may have a negative effect on the initial action).

We give below some details on the domains of application of the notion of activity system,
and on its closeness to other theoretical constructs.

Domain of application

The domain of application of the concept of activity system includes two cases.
1) The domain of an activity system may be identical to the mission of one organizational
unit: to a sales region corresponds a sales activity system, to a maintenance section
corresponds a maintenance activity system, etc. But the activity system is generally larger
than the unit. The group of actors belonging to the activity system also includes all the
people involved in the domain, inside as well as outside the organization. The actors' group
of the maintenance action system also includes maintenance tools vendors, machine
users, production managers, etc. The maintenance action system also includes the
maintenance problems and objectives commonly considered as important in the profession,
as well as the solutions to maintenance problems contained in books, published in the

18
Two consequences may be derived from this paragraph: (1) competence and knowledge extend way
beyond the mere knowledge of procedures and routines (on this point, see also Romelaer [2002c, paragraph
8, note 55]), and (2) competence and knowledge have the same logical structure as an activity system. From
the latter, it results that one can probably develop a general theory in which action and knowledge are
entities having the same basic structure. Needless to say, such a theory has still to be fully developed and
tested. Elements provided here should be taken as a (fairly detailed) view on what could be such a theory. For
reasons not developed here, it also seems to us that objects and concepts have the same generic structure.
Hence it could be that we are close to a general theory of Oaks, where objects, actions and knowledge have
the same inner structure.
19
The interested reader may find developments on decision processes and on innovation processes (both are
action systems) in Desreumaux and Romelaer (2001), as well as in Romelaer (2002b)
30
professional press or presented in courses. In a sense, an activity system concerning a
domain is the real organization through which the activities are done, and the real
organization may be distinct from the formal one.
2) We also find activity systems whose actors' group is made up of people belonging to
various organizations or units. The international careers and transfers' action system is a
case in point. Other examples include the set of salespeople and clients, the set of human
resource specialists in a firm, and the set of people dealing with maintenance in a company
where no maintenance section exists. Some activity systems thus may have no official
existence (we mentioned this in paragraph 8 of Romelaer [2002c]). In a sense then, there
may exist an activity system even if no formal organization exists to deal with the activity.

Closeness to other theoretical constructs

The actors' group of any activity system is what Mintzberg (1979) calls "a work
constellation". The concept of action system is close to what semioticians like Eco (1985)
call "a furnished world". It is also close to Checkland and Scholes' "soft systems" (1991),
since the links between the elements are in most case not rigid. The expression soft
systems as a lot to appeal: activity systems exist as structures, and should be taken
seriously, but this does not mean that action possibilities do not exist
20
. However, to come
back to Checkland and Scholes, our definition is more "behavioral" and less "teleological"
than theirs: the actors objective is not only to provide a service which is always better,
quicker and less expensive. The actors may for example give importance to questions
concerning roles and identities, as March showed in generic decision situations (March,
1996; Romelaer, 2002a).
Activity systems as we define them also differ from Crozier and Friedberg's concrete
action systems (1980). The latter originate in the actors' interactions and mutual regulation
(hence their insisting on actors strategies, power, and quasi-negociations). The action
system originates in the domain, which often imposes itself on the actors because of the
activity system's logic: among others, economic and technical constraints have to be lived
with.
In a precise sense, it may be said that these relations are "a natural language" or "an action
grammar"
21
. This will not be explained here. We shall only mention that the notion is close
to the concepts of semantic network (Sowa, 1991) of conceptual roles and case
grammars
22
. Finally the activity system is close to the generic concept of organization as
developed by Romelaer (2002c). It is more general than the Mintzberg concept of
organization: an action system does not necessarily have a clear strategic apex. Its
governance often includes mutual adjustment and some standardization of competencies,
but the intensity of standardization of work processes and the intensity of standardization
of results may be quite low, and direct supervision may be inexistent
23
.


20
Hence we are far from what some structuralist theories have proposed. Action systems and activity
systems are not superstructures or straight-jackets which impose themselves on the actors living in them,
to the point of wiping out all individual freedom.
21
The expression grammar of action is used here in a different sense from that of Pentland el al. (1994).
22
On the latter notions, we shall just indicate some authors: Fillmore, as well as Boguraev and Park-Jones
(see Sabah, 1990) , Sellars, Putnam, Field, Harman, and Block (the latter five are mentioned in Fortis).
23
The concepts are in fact still in construction. Hence we called action system in (Romelaer, 1998) what
we prefer to call here activity system since it is linked to a whole domain of activity, rather than to a single
action. We were probably influenced by the fact that Crozier and Friedberg (1980) use the expression
concrete action system to designate the system formed by local activities performed by a specified set of
people concerning a specified set of questions.
31
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