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The career reality of global managers: an examination of career triggers

Tineke Cappellena; Maddy Janssensa
a
Research Centre for Organization Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Online publication date: 29 September 2010
To cite this Article Cappellen, Tineke and Janssens, Maddy(2010) 'The career reality of global managers: an examination of
career triggers', The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21: 11, 1884 — 1910
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The International Journal of Human Resource Management,
Vol. 21, No. 11, September 2010, 1884–1910
The career reality of global managers: an examination of career

triggers
Tineke Cappellen* and Maddy Janssens
Research Centre for Organization Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
This study investigates whether the conceptualization of contemporary careers
corresponds with the career realities of global managers, a new type of international
work in organizations. Based on in-depth interviews with 45 global managers,
or managers having worldwide coordination responsibility, we examine whether their
different career moves are triggered by factors that reflect a short-term perspective,
a non-hierarchical course, self-management, and internal values. The findings have
Downloaded By: [University of Lancaster] At: 21:09 23 February 2011
implications for both the career and international human resource (HR) literature.
They highlight that a balanced approach better captures the career realities of global
managers and suggest an altered meaning of midcareer experience. They further point
to the continuing importance of headquarters, question the necessity of an international
career anchor, and indicate the opportunities of flexible global work to achieve a stable
family life.
Keywords: boundaryless career; career development; global managers; protean career
Introduction
Careers in international organizations today are shaped by new developments in both the
career domain and international management. Due to changes in the nature of work,
contemporary careers are, in contrast with the predictable, secure and linear careers of
the past, portrayed as flexible, dynamic and fluid (e.g., Arthur and Rousseau 1996;
Baruch 2004). They are presented as crossing organizational and functional boundaries,
being the responsibility of the individual rather than the organization. At the same time,
due to the increasing worldwide integration of business, international organizations
are witnessing a structural shift in the nature of their coordination mechanisms
(Galbraith 2000). Although they continue to rely on traditional expatriate assignments to
manage international operations, they increasingly use new types of international work
(Roberts, Kossek and Ozeki 1998; Kedia and Mukherji 1999; Collings, Scullion and
Morley 2007; Peiperl and Jonsen 2007). Similar to the changes in the career domain, this
new international work is characterized as a flexible and dynamic way of coordination
(Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992; Galbraith 2000). Together, these two developments produce
the overall question of how careers of new international workers need to be understood.
In this study, we focus on one new type of international work e.g., global managers
whose task it is to achieve worldwide coordination (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992; Pucik and
Saba 1998), sometimes also called the transnational competent manager (Adler and
Bartholomew 1992). It is our purpose to increase our understanding of these managers’
career realities, examining whether the flexible conceptualization of contemporary careers
*Corresponding author. Email: tineke.cappellen@econ.kuleuven.be
ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online

q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2010.505090
http://www.informaworld.com
The International Journal of Human Resource Management 1885
holds for this new type of international work. Through in-depth interviews with 45 global
managers of three organizations in a transnational context, we wanted to capture their
personal perspective on their career reality and assess whether their different career moves
were triggered by factors that reflect recent ideas in career theory.
Connecting contemporary career theory with recent international human resources
management (IHRM) literature is relevant in keeping the field of career studies up-to-date
by examining a new critical mass of global professionals (Peiperl and Jonsen 2007) as well
as being important to understanding the nature of working internationally by studying their
career issues (Peltonen 1997; Suutari 2003). Although earlier studies already connected
career theory with IHRM literature, this study differs from them in three ways. First,
several studies (e.g., Black and Gregersen 1991; Fish and Wood 1996; Selmer 2005) have
focused on understanding the career issues of expatriate managers such as staffing and
selection, training and adjustment. Such studies are oriented towards traditional career
topics and traditional international assignments, neglecting the recent developments
in both literatures. Second, other studies have moved to aspects of recent career theory
but keep studying expatriate managers rather than new types of international work.
For instance, previous research (e.g., Dickmann and Harris 2005) has focused on
developing career capital from international assignments, but restricted their empirical
study to the role of traditional expatriate assignments. Third, still other studies have
combined recent career theory with new types of international work, but focused on other
global professionals. For instance, Mayerhofer, Hartmann and Herbert (2004) have
examined how flexpatriates – the frequent flyers of international work – self-manage the
career issues and family and personal demands linked to their flexpatriate lifestyle. Suutari
(2003) and colleagues (Suutari and Taka 2004) have studied career correlates such as
career orientation and career anchors of managers having successive expatriate
assignments.
With our study, we aim to address two gaps. First, in the career literature, a discussion
has started on the accuracy of portraying careers as all change and fully dynamic,
suggesting the need to conduct empirical research that identifies a fair representation of
today’s career realities (Baruch 2006). In this study, we empirically develop a balanced
approach to careers, identifying which elements of the traditional and nontraditional career
views are combined in the career realities of global managers. Second, in the IHRM
literature, our understanding of new types of international work is until now mainly based
upon conceptual theory and insights from HR managers, leading to several calls to study
these phenomena from the perspective of the managers themselves (e.g., Pucik and Saba
1998; Suutari 2003; Cappellen and Janssens 2005). Our interviews with global managers
allow us to further gain insight into new international work, continuing to highlight the
role of headquarters, questioning an international career anchor, and identifying the
paradox that flexible global work is a way to achieve stability in family life.
The paper is structured as follows. We begin with a theoretical section in which we
discuss the international work of global managers and identify four characteristics of
contemporary careers from recent career theory. We then present our methodology,
introducing the three organizations in which we interviewed 45 global managers and
discussing our data analysis process. In the findings, we present the triggers that global
managers experienced as the causal factors to establish a new career move and discuss
whether their careers reflect the flexible and dynamic nature as suggested by recent career
theory. We conclude by discussing the contributions of this study and its implications for
future research and practice.
1886 T. Cappellen and M. Janssens
Theoretical background
Global managers as a new type of international work
In line with previous scholars (Adler and Bartholomew 1992; Pucik and Saba 1998), we
introduce global managers as a new type of international work by contrasting them with
traditional expatriate managers. Examining the literature on managers having a worldwide
coordination responsibility, we identify three characteristics that focus on the distinct
nature of global managers’ work. First, a global managers’ main task entails worldwide
coordination. According to Pucik and Saba (1998), a global manager is someone who is
assigned to a position with a cross-border responsibility and needs to work across cultural
and functional boundaries. Having this type of responsibility, global managers need to
have the ability to resolve complex and potentially contradictory issues embedded in a
global environment (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992) such as finding a balance between the
simultaneous demands of global integration and local responsiveness. According to Adler
and Bartholomew (1992), global managers must understand the worldwide business
environment from a global perspective. They further contrasted the nature of this work
with the work of expatriate managers, which they characterize as being an interface,
managing the relationship between headquarters and the country they are transferred to.
Second, global managers need to work with and learn from people from many cultures
simultaneously (Adler and Bartholomew 1992). This requires them to be flexible and open
minded towards a multitude of cultures (Pucik and Saba 1998), having a broad cultural
perspective and appreciation for cultural diversity. According to Adler and Bartholomew
(1992), this is very different from expatriate managers who interact with a single
foreign culture for a predetermined period of time. That way, expatriate managers are
considered to become experts in one specific culture (Adler and Bartholomew 1992; Pucik
and Saba 1998) while global managers learn about many foreign cultures’ perspectives,
tastes or trends.
Third, global managers’ cross-cultural interactions with colleagues occur on a daily
basis, on regular multicountry business trips (Adler and Bartholomew 1992) or through
virtual communication tools such as video- and teleconferencing. Working with people on
a worldwide scale, global managers need to interact with foreign colleagues as equals
rather than from within clearly defined hierarchies of structural and cultural dominance
(Adler and Bartholomew 1992). Again, scholars have contrasted this characteristic of
global managers’ work with expatriate managers who are considered to integrate
foreigners into the headquarters’ national organizational culture (Adler and Bartholomew
1992). These interactions are consequently taking place within clearly defined hierarchies
of structural and cultural dominance and subordination (Adler and Bartholomew 1992;
Pucik and Saba 1998).
While IHRM literature considers these three characteristics as specific to global
managers, we notice that this way of working may also occur in a more geocentric or
polycentric approach of traditional international work such as expatriate assignments
(Edström and Galbraith 1977). Expatriate managers as well may have a global mindset,
collaborating with host and third country nationals in subsidiaries (Tarique, Schuler and
Gong 2006) or engaging in an expatriate assignment as a learning and development
opportunity that might change their frame of reference (Edström and Galbraith 1977;
Shay and Baack 2004). However, as we are interested in studying the career realities of
new global professionals, functioning in the way described above, we have chosen to focus
on managers whose responsibility it is to coordinate on a worldwide scale in a flexible way.
This way, we are better able to capture the new type of responsibility in international work.
Characteristics of contemporary careers

In the 1990s, new ideas in career dynamics have resulted in concepts such as the
boundaryless career (Arthur and Rousseau 1996), the Protean career (Hall 1996, 2004),
intelligent career (Arthur, Claman and DeFillippi 1995) and the post-corporate career
(Peiperl and Baruch 1997). Although these concepts have their own specific emphasis,
they all refer to a changing nature of careers that is characterized by an increased level of
flexibility and complexity (Baruch 2006). In this study, we refer to ‘contemporary careers’
to indicate that we are drawing on the general characteristics underlying each of these
career concepts (cfr. Lips-Wiersma and Hall 2007). Reviewing the recent career literature
(e.g., Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Hall 1996; Peiperl and Baruch 1997), we identify these
characteristics as: a short-term perspective, non-hierarchical course, self-management and
internal values.
Short-term perspective
The first characteristic of short-term perspective refers to the time frame according to
which contemporary careers unfold. Recent career theory tends to emphasize this short-
term perspective when discussing the career moves in itself and the employer-employee
relationship. First, careers are no longer thought to be one long cycle but are suggested to
be increasingly composed of many short cycles or episodes which last perhaps two to four
years (Mirvis and Hall 1996; Hall 2002). In this short cycle, individuals go through the
stages of exploration, trial and finally establishment after which the work is being
mastered (Hall 2002). They initiate a new cycle or career move when work becomes a
routine, making careers a series of ministages across functions, organizations and other
work boundaries (Sullivan 1999).
Second, the changing nature of the employer –employee relationship also contributes
to a short-term perspective on contemporary careers (Adamson, Doherty and Viney 1998).
As the psychological contract between employers and employees tends to become
short-term and transactional, contemporary careers increasingly unfold across multiple
organizational boundaries (DeFillippi and Arthur 1994; Sullivan 1999). From an
employer’s perspective, organizations are increasingly looking for performance on an as
needed-basis, no longer offering long-term job security (Arthur and Rousseau 1996). From
an employee’s perspective, individuals are increasingly searching for new, bounded
opportunities for development (Herriot and Pemberton 1995; Rousseau 1996) in which
they seek continuous learning and marketability across multiple firms (Mirvis and Hall
1996; Sullivan 1999) rather than professional advancement within one or two firms
(Sullivan 1999). The result is a psychological contract with conditional commitment and a
time span of only a few years (Baruch 2004).
Non-hierarchical course
A second characteristic of contemporary careers is its non-hierarchical course, which
points to the direction in which careers unfold, a pervasive theme in recent career theory
(Hall 2002). In contrast with traditional career literature (Rosenbaum 1979) which
emphasized stability, hierarchy and clearly defined job positions for career progression in
which success was measured by promotion and salary, recent career theory (DeFillippi and
Arthur 1994; Hall 1996) suggests that career development is no longer predetermined by a
linear, hierarchical path of promotion. Career progression or advancement has taken
on an entirely different meaning from the one entailing the notion of vertical mobility
(Hall 2002). While not obtaining a promotion or failing to move up the hierarchical ladder
used to symbolize failure (Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Baruch 2004), the direction in
contemporary careers becomes uncertain. It is no longer apparent how a logical, ordered
and sequential career path may actually evolve (Adamson et al. 1998). Rather, career
development gains a personal meaning including a multitude of potential directions: each
career move can be a sideway move, change of direction, change of organization, or
change of aspiration (Baruch 2004).
Self-management
The third characteristic of contemporary careers refers to self-management, indicating that
the careerist him/herself is the agent in determining the course of his/her career. Recent
career theory suggests that organizations need to be aware that they are no longer the
sole owner of career systems and planning of career paths (Arthur et al. 1995; Hall 1996).
For instance, the protean career theory suggests that workers increasingly ‘self-direct’
their own career development, taking on the responsibility of planning and managing their
own careers (Hall 1996; Briscoe and Hall 2006). As such, they navigate their own career
which incorporates the advantage of having multiple options available to choose from
(Baruch 2004). In a similar vein, the boundaryless career theory suggests that workers
have the power to reject existing career opportunities for personal or family reasons
(Arthur and Rousseau 1996). This characteristic of self-management is further reflected in
the topics of employability, networks and self-awareness.
First, recent career theory strongly emphasizes self-management when discussing
employability or the extent to which employees are marketable through a high
transferability of skills and competencies (Sullivan, Carden and Martin 1998). Whereas
skills used to be organizationally bound and firm specific (Sullivan et al. 1998;
Sullivan 1999), it is now argued that portable skills, knowledge and abilities (Arthur et al.
1995; Baker and Aldrich 1996; Bird 1996) increase workers’ range of potential jobs and
organizations on the labor market (Hall 1996; Mirvis and Hall 1996). Employees are
therefore advised to develop their knowing-how career competency (DeFillippi and Arthur
1994) to compensate for the loss of job security (Hall and Moss 1998; Savickas 2000;
Baruch 2004) and ensure future career possibilities within and across organizational
boundaries (Storey 2000).
Second, self-management is implied in recent career discussions on networks. Networks
are suggested to be an important strategy to self-manage careers because they provide
information that aids in the worker’s development of career opportunities and creates a
competitive edge in regard to career advancement, mobility and learning (Sullivan 1999).
In contrast to traditional career theory, these networks no longer exclusively refer to
business networks within the organization. Rather, they are suggested to incorporate
communities of practice (DeFillippi and Arthur 1994) and developmental relationships
outside one’s place of work (Thomas and Higgins 1996) such as colleagues, friends and
other associates (Hall 1996; Sullivan 1999). Large, non-redundant networks are suggested
to make workers more successful in seeking jobs and crossing the boundaries of multiple
firms (Sullivan 1999; Littleton, Arthur and Rousseau 2000). Knowing-whom (DeFillippi
and Arthur 1994) therefore becomes an increasingly important career competency.
Third, recent career theory strongly emphasizes self-management when discussing the
high level of self-awareness and personal responsibility (Hall 1996). Self-awareness is an
important strategy to self-manage careers because it allows people to choose meaningful
work that creates both a personal identification with work (Mohrman and Cohen 1995;
Mirvis and Hall 1996) and psychological success (Hall 1996). As employees take on the
responsibility of planning and managing their career themselves, they will also change
them according to their will and inclinations (Mirvis and Hall 1996; Baruch 2004),
requiring a high level of self-awareness. Recent career theory strongly suggests that
careers, no longer following organizational needs, increasingly become an agreement
between one’s self and one’s work (Hall and Moss 1998), stimulating the importance of
the career competency of knowing-why (DeFillippi and Arthur 1994).
Driven by internal values

Finally, recent career theory presents the contemporary career as increasingly driven by
internal values, referring to personal preferences guiding the course of careers (Mohrman
and Cohen 1995; Mirvis and Hall 1996). While the above three characteristics primarily
indicate the ways in which careers are changing, this characteristic assigns a certain
meaning to the contemporary career. In particular, it is argued that the values that drive a
career are no longer the traditional external measures of success such as income, rank and
status (Baruch 2004). Rather, self-actualization, fulfillment and satisfaction are suggested
to drive contemporary careers. The protean career for instance has been focusing on
psychological success which is based on one’s unique vision and central values in life that
guide career decisions (Hall and Moss 1998; Briscoe and Hall 2006). In addition, the
values are not confined to work values but increasingly include other spheres such as one’s
personal and family life or religion (Patton 2000). Furthermore, employees need to realize
that their internal values can develop across situations and time, leading to change over the
course of one’s career (Patton 2000).
In general, recent career theory presents a flexible, dynamic and individualized
perspective on careers which strongly contrasts with that of traditional career theories.
Overall, a nontraditional view is presented of individuals who take control of their career
in terms of what they themselves find important; pursuing short-term benefits in multiple
directions through proactive behavior, which is guided by internal values.
Career triggers
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether global managers’ careers are as flexible
and dynamic in nature as suggested by recent career theory. To do so, we use the definition
that a career is the unfolding sequence of a person’s work experiences over time (Arthur,
Hall and Lawrence 1989). We consequently operationalize a career as a sequence of
distinct career moves or short cycles (Hall 2002), each of them initiated by a causal factor
or trigger through which the person will start to explore a new career move (Hall 1986,
2002). These triggers are values, events and actions in global managers’ careers that
initiate new career moves (Hall 1986). In this study, we identify the triggers in global
managers’ careers and examine whether these reflect one of the four characteristics
underlying contemporary careers: a short-term perspective, non-hierarchical course,
self-management and driven by internal values.
Method
To examine the career realities of global managers, this study relies on a qualitative
research design based on a combination of grounded theory and content analysis
(Glaser and Strauss 1967; Weber 1985; Strauss and Corbin 1998). Through in-depth
interviews (Kvale 1996), we aim to capture a richness of information, beneficial to

understanding the career realities of global managers. Our empirical study started with
identifying organizations in which global managers operate, followed by the data
collection with 45 global managers themselves and data analysis.
Three organizations in a transnational environment

To study global managers’ career realities, we turned to organizations in a transnational
environment. A transnational environment was chosen because it is characterized by both
a high need for global integration and local responsiveness (Ghoshal and Nohria 1993).
Operating in such an environment requires a global mindset (Kedia and Mukherji 1999)
and global managers who can resolve complex and potentially contradictory issues
(Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992) such as finding a balance between the simultaneous demands
of global integration and national responsiveness (Pucik and Saba 1998). Within the
transnational sectors of drugs and pharmaceuticals, photographic equipment, computers
and automobiles (Ghoshal and Nohria 1993), we contacted three organizations with
headquarters in Belgium: Pharma Corporation, View Corporation and Vision Corporation.
Although headquarters are no longer assumed to play the leading part in transnational
organizations (Galbraith 2000), we experienced in our search for global managers that
people with global responsibility are most likely to be employed at headquarters. We
therefore decided to restrict our sample to global managers at headquarters, minimizing
the influence of this extraneous variance on our research findings (Eisenhardt 1989).
Pharma Corporation is a Belgian headquartered organization in the pharmaceutical
sector that employs 8500 people worldwide. It presents itself as a leading global
biopharmaceutical company dedicated to research, development and commercialization of
biopharmaceutical products. It has the broadest international reach within our study, with
subsidiaries operating in 40 countries. View Corporation is a Belgian headquartered
company in the visualization or photographic sector that employs 4200 people. This
organization presents itself as a world leader in professional markets of displays and
visualization solutions. It has its own facilities for sales and marketing, customer support,
R&D and manufacturing in 25 countries in Europe, America and Asia-Pacific. Vision
Corporation is the youngest and smallest of the three organizations we studied, with 262
people employed worldwide. It is a Belgian headquartered organization in the
visualization sector that has six wholly owned offices in Europe, America and Asia, and
works closely together with another nine distributors in Europe, South America and Asia.
This company presents itself as a leading worldwide developer and supplier of visual
inspection equipment.
Although these three organizations were different in size and level of growth towards
the transnational model (Galbraith 2000), our initial contacts with the global HR manager
indicated that all three organizations relied on global managers as characterized in
our definition.
Data collection: global managers

We interviewed 45 managers who, at the time of the interview, had a worldwide
coordination responsibility within the organization and were between 35 and 50 years old.
This age cohort was chosen because it reflects the middle career stage (Hall and Mansfield
1975). As this career stage is characterized by both career experience and future career
opportunities (cf. Super and Bohn 1970), we were able to identify an established career
pattern as well as future career aspirations.
The interviewees were primarily male, except for six women. The majority of them
(41) were of Belgian nationality, but Indian, Luxemburg, French and Dutch nationalities
also occurred in our sample. These latter respondents either applied for a global
management position outside their home country (n ¼ 2), followed their previous
company to Belgium (n ¼ 1) or stayed in Belgium after an expatriate assignment (n ¼ 1).
The average age of the interviewees was 40 years. They held positions with worldwide
responsibility in different functional domains: R&D, HRM, sales, finance, operations and
marketing.
We started each interview by stressing our interest in the respondent’s personal
experiences in the areas of ‘work, career and organization’ (Peltonen 1999). We then
asked each global manager a ‘generative narrative question’ (Flick 1998) on their career
history: ‘Could you tell me the story about your career and the different steps you made
towards your current position? What were in your experience the different moves you
made during your career? Why were they important to you and how did they come about?’
We formulated this type of question as it provides a facilitating context to speak

elaborately about career experiences in their context (Riessman 1993). In this way, the
career story becomes a meaningful structure that organizes events and actions into a
coherent picture of the career considering the extent to which they have affected it
(McGaughey 2004). The curriculum vita of each global manager, which was collected
beforehand, served as background information during the interview. The interview
continued using a semi-structured scheme asking questions about: (1) the international
dimension of work, such as ‘Which of these moves do you consider international in
nature?’, ‘What was your task within this expatriate assignment?’ or ‘How do you handle
cultural differences?’; (2) individual and organizational career management tactics, such
as ‘Does the organization have formal, institutionalized plans to develop your career?’ or
‘What personal efforts have you made to develop you career?’; and (3) a general
evaluation of their careers and future career opportunities such as ‘Did you make the
career progress you expected to make?’ The interviews were conducted in 2005 and 2006
at the interviewees’ offices and their length ranged from one hour to three hours. They were
conducted in Dutch or English and were tape-recorded and fully transcribed.
Data analysis
The data analysis was conducted in three distinct phases. First, we started by identifying
and reconstructing each global manager’s career. To this purpose, we relied on global
managers’ stories to identify relevant career moves. As we considered global managers’
individual experience of career moves to be decisive (Flick 1998), the respondents
themselves determined whether the career move was distinct. Overall, we identified 330
career moves which referred to: (1) career moves outside a company context (n ¼ 40): a
PhD (n ¼ 7), MBA (n ¼ 8), internship (n ¼ 3), self-employment (n ¼ 4), world trip
(n ¼ 1) and compulsory military service (n ¼ 17); and (2) career moves within a company
context (n ¼ 290). In the latter group, we classified the career moves according to two
criteria: career moves were made either within (n ¼ 156) or outside (n ¼ 134) the current
organization and were local (n ¼ 102) or international (n ¼ 188) in nature. International
moves include: systematic commuting between countries (n ¼ 4), relocation of one’s
professional base through an expatriate (from headquarters) experience (n ¼ 25) or
inpatriate (towards headquarters) experience (n ¼ 6) and a global career move (n ¼ 153).
This latter refers to the position as global manager having a worldwide responsibility.
Based upon these types of career moves, we reconstructed for each global manager his/her
career. It is remarkable that 22 global managers in our sample had never had an
expatriate, inpatriate or commuting experience, exclusively combining global and local
career moves in their career, whereas 23 global managers combined an expatriate,
inpatriate or commuting experience with global career moves.
In the second phase of our data analysis, we searched these career moves for causal
factors or triggers that reflect people’s motivation for change. Working in the tradition of
grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1998), we assigned
meaning to these data observations through constantly comparing data and emerging
categorization schemes. This method resulted in the construction of different (sub-)
categories of triggers in which each category refers to a common meaning that captures the
essence of multiple observations (Locke 2001). For example, we constructed the category
‘skill development’ for all interview quotes indicating a career move in order to gain
experience through which global managers could add or improve their skills. In a similar
vein, the category ‘personal networks’ was constructed, grouping all quotes that indicate
the role of personal networks in helping global managers to obtain a specific position.
After a category was named, we studied the data again and looked for similar interview
quotes that would fit this category. If revisited data did not fit well into a category,
we revised the category or abandoned it, rescheduling the interview quotes into other
categories.
In total, we identified 242 observations which we categorized as 15 triggers that caused
global managers to establish a new career move. Taking into account that we reconstructed
330 career moves, this means that global managers’ career stories did not contain a trigger
for each career move. This can be explained by our interpretation that some career moves
were not triggered by specific events or actions. This was the case, for example, when the
first career move was an arbitrary choice because ‘my father had founded the company and
I just started there, there is no motivation at all’ or when male respondents were compelled to
join the military. Or, in some cases, global managers did not mention a specific trigger when
they, for example, considered their next career move a logical consequence of the previous
one. In contrast, some global managers mentioned multiple triggers for one career move, for
example when they were ‘quite excited about the international aspects, and the other aspect,
it was a move to headquarters’. In these cases, we coded two triggers for one career move.
Overall, we relied on global managers’ personal career stories to identify a meaningful
trigger(s) rather than trying to identify one trigger for each career move.
In the last phase of our data analysis, we relied on a content analysis approach
(Weber 1985) to interpret how each of these triggers reflect the four characteristics
identified from recent career theory: short-term perspective, non-hierarchical course, self-
management, and driven by internal values. We categorized triggers as reflections, both
confirming and contradicting, of: (1) a short-term perspective if they incorporated a time
frame; (2) a non-hierarchical course if they pointed to the direction of a career move;
(3) self-management if they considered the agent of a career move; and (4) driven by internal
values if they considered personal preferences. When triggers reflected multiple
characteristics, we categorized them into the characteristic most prominently emphasized.
In the findings section, we indicate these cases and argument our interpretation.
To improve the validity of these analytic processes, the two authors each separately
constructed the categories (triggers as well as characteristics), followed by a comparison and
discussion to establish agreement on category building. When differences in interpretation
arose, we went back to the original interview texts and our coding to decide on the most
appropriate interpretation. The end result of our data analysis is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Data analysis.

Quotes Trigger Career characteristic
Confirming Contradicting
‘I was doing that for almost two years, and I wanted to move on’ Breaking routines (n 5 10)
‘To become a product manager, you needed to be a rep, sales rep in the field to experience what it is Long-term career goal (n 5 13) Short-term perspective
and I did that’
‘I decided to try to make a move leaving Finance and entering more business operational’ Lateral moves (n 5 8)
‘I want to keep on working internationally, but I would need an organization with a large Working in headquarter environ-
headquarters and decision power here’ ment (n 5 9) Non-hierarchical course
‘So I started quite smoothly, launched a product immediately. That went very well and it was fun Promotion opportunities (n 5 6)
and then I went to their headquarters in Paris. So I did two years in the Netherlands and then I went
to their headquarters is Paris, as a promotion. I became International Product Manager’
‘I got a phone call from this professor, my Ph.D. supervisor, who told me that there would be a Personal networks (n 5 19)
position here at Pharma Corporation that would become vacant as head of the chemistry
department’
‘I grasped an opportunity when I knew that someone was leaving an area management position, I Proactivity (n 5 18)
asked, proposed to take over his job’
‘Managing a big group of sixty people, so that was, when you look on my resume, missing’ Skill development (n 5 18) Self-management
‘Then there was a reorganization and I became head of the division’ Organizational changes (n 5 42)
‘They did a number of acquisitions, larger and smaller ones and in the end, in 2000 I was asked to
head a number of, start-up companies in Silicon Valley’
‘It was a contract for two years, extendable for a year, View Corporation decided however not to’
‘Because of my family situation, that is a choice I have made, that I cannot move abroad’ Family life (n 5 30)
‘It was not the right time for my family’
‘On the West Coast of the US, my wife liked the idea’
‘The difference between the two companies was quite large in terms of culture’ Preference for work environment
‘I liked the product and the service, type of activity and also the fact that it was a growing industry (n 5 27)
with a lot of possibilities’
‘I was aiming for an international position’ Internationalism (n 5 18) Driven by internal values
‘The aspect of working in a large international company’
The International Journal of Human Resource Management
‘So that was for me a good mix of content-wise being in a marketing environment again’ Technical/functional
competence (n 5 9)
‘The intention at that time was primarily to make money’ Remuneration (n 5 3)
‘Own choice, I could have stayed, but I decided after four years that I wanted something different’ Fundamental career
change (n 5 12)
1893
Findings
In this section, we discuss the career reality of global managers through presenting the
triggers they experienced as causal factors to establish a new career move (Hall 1986).
To identify whether their careers reflect the flexible nature of contemporary careers, we
examine these triggers and assess how they confirm or contradict the four characteristics of
short-term perspective, non-hierarchical course, self-management, and driven by internal
values.
Short-term perspective
The first characteristic reflects the short-term perspective of global managers’ careers.
To examine the time frame of global managers’ careers, we first turn to factual data in
terms of number of different career moves and number of different organizations worked
for, followed by a discussion of two triggers presented in Table 2 that confirm as well as
contradict this short-term perspective: breaking routines and long-term career goals.
Characteristics of career moves

Our analysis of global managers’ career moves confirmed that they were short-term in
nature. On average, global managers in our sample had made 7.4 career moves in their
careers until now, ranging from three to a maximum of 11 career moves. They were rather
short in time: on average, they lasted 28 months, ranging from a minimum of one month to
a maximum of 180 months. This confirms Hall’s argument (2002) that contemporary
career moves last two to four years. While the number and length of global managers’
career moves reflect a flexible career through short-term career moves, our data showed
that global managers’ careers do not necessarily unfold across multiple organizational
boundaries. Across all three organizations, global managers’ organizational tenure was on
average 8.5 years. In addition, when further examining this organizational tenure, global
managers on average experienced three to four career moves in one single organization.
These findings contradict the short-term nature of the employee-employer relationship
discussed in recent career theory (Adamson et al. 1998).
Table 2. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of short-term perspective.

Trigger: Short-term perspective Quotes
Confirming
Breaking routines (n ¼ 10) ‘I was doing that for almost two years, and I wanted to
move on’
‘When I start missing things, it becomes a routine to me, then
I start wondering what could be an alternative position?’
‘And for me, the zoom is typically three years, and if you look
to my CV, again you find these three years . . . ’
Contradicting
Long-term career goal (n ¼ 13) ‘To become a product manager, you needed to be a rep, sales
rep in the field to experience what it is and I did that’
‘It was clear at that time that this wasn’t going to be my
job for the rest of my life, but it was a good opportunity to go
in that direction’
‘Other opportunities didn’t seem to be good choices on a
longer term’
Breaking routines
The trigger of breaking routines (n ¼ 10) is an indicator of the short-term perspective
because global managers explicitly related the experience of a routine to a time frame. Nine
respondents in our sample felt their position to become a routine after having been there for a
certain amount of time. For instance, one global manager told us: ‘it is time to move on as
I’m doing the same things as I was doing last year’. Regular new career moves were
experienced as necessary. For instance, one respondent argued that in global management
positions, ‘the zoom’ would be typically ‘two’, ‘three’, ‘four years’. This again confirms
Hall’s theory (2002) that contemporary career moves last between two to four years.
Long-term career goal

Our data revealed, however, that 12 global managers in our sample reflected on their
careers from the perspective of a long-term career goal. This trigger (n ¼ 13) points to the
significance of a longer term, contradicting the short-term perspective as suggested in

recent career theory. Our interviewees seemed to have a clear sense of where they wanted
to go with their career and acted correspondingly. For example, a global product manager
now working at Vision Corporation expressed how he estimated his long-term promotion
chances in a previous organization to be low:
I liked working at company X, I liked my job there, but I also had the feeling that I was a little
bit stuck in my career. The people that were one rank higher than me all, let us say, started
with the company at the same time as I did, still young and, let us say, if you start there in this
way at the bottom and you work your way up and go through your career, you get stuck at a
certain moment in time in everything you have done and achieved. [ . . . ] That’s why, that is
the primary reason to change.
This trigger also required global managers to be conscious about the next career move
to be taken and increased their willingness to change organizations. However, these
elements of self-management and crossing organizational boundaries tend to result from
the long-term perspective. For this reason, we categorized this trigger as contradicting the
short-term perspective. Further analyzing this trigger of long-term career goals, we noticed
that global managers only started to mention this from the fourth career move onwards.
This finding suggests that a certain amount of career experience is needed before global
managers start thinking about their long-term career future.
Non-hierarchical course
The second characteristic reflects the way in which global managers’ careers unfold along
a non-hierarchical course. Again, our data showed mixed results. While some respondents
mentioned the importance of making lateral career moves as a trigger, others still indicated
the relevance of working in a headquarter environment and promotion opportunities as
indicated in Table 3. We need to note here that not many triggers referring to the direction
of a career move were mentioned. This does not indicate, however, that other career moves
in our sample were neither lateral nor hierarchical, but points to the fact that their direction
was not the main trigger to establish them.
Lateral moves
First, our data revealed that some global managers (n ¼ 5) referred to lateral moves as
triggers in their careers (n ¼ 8). This confirms the non-hierarchical course as suggested in
recent career theory as it points to instances in which global managers consciously chose
Table 3. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of non-hierarchical course.
Trigger: Non-hierarchical course Quotes

Confirming
Lateral moves (n ¼ 8) ‘I decided to try to make a move leaving Finance
and entering more business operational’
‘I had done a lot of headquarter-type jobs and
I thought perhaps it would be beneficial to me
to be closer to the real operational and business
issues’
‘I accepted the position because I wanted to go
back to a more operational responsibility in a
smaller business’
Contradicting
Working in headquarter environment (n ¼ 9) ‘I want to keep on working internationally, but
I would need an organization with a large
headquarters and decision power here’

‘Some positions are global in nature and you are
not going to have that position if you’re
not in headquarters’
‘I always thought you need to be at the center of
the universe just to be in touch and have some
exposure to the very senior management of the
company’
Promotion opportunities (n ¼ 6) ‘So I started quite smoothly, launched a product
immediately. That went very well and it was fun
and then I went to their headquarters in Paris.
So I did two years in the Netherlands and then
I went to their headquarters is Paris,
as a promotion. I became International
Product Manager.’
‘What made me accept this, is my urge for
promotion’
‘And then I got a promotion, and I became
responsible for the Application Lab, so I was
Application Lab Manager’
to make a sideway move (Baruch 2004) towards a different field of expertise compared
with their previous career move. For example, a global purchasing director at Pharma
Corporation told us how he preferred to leave the domain of finance after his fourth career
move rather than keep on growing hierarchically in this domain:
I decided to try to make a move leaving finance and entering more business operational and
I had an opportunity to do this through the management controls of Pharma operations.
For two global managers in our sample, these lateral moves were an opportunity to
move back to a specific domain from which their careers had strayed off, for example
going ‘back to a more operational responsibility for a smaller, in relative terms, business’.
Working in headquarter environment

Second, our data revealed that some global managers referred to opportunities to work in a
headquarter environment as a trigger to establish a new career move (n ¼ 9). Aiming for
a headquarter environment indicates the direction in which the career is unfolding, in this
case contradicting the non-hierarchical course as suggested in recent career theory
(Arthur and Rousseau 1996). Six global managers in our sample referred to headquarters
as a powerful environment ‘not only determining what others are going to execute, but also
the strategies’ or advantageous environment to work in. For example a marketing manager
at Pharma Corporation considered a Belgian headquartered organization to guarantee
international career opportunities, even if he would decide to have no expatriate
experiences any more:
Why Pharma Corporation? [ . . . ] it’s a Belgian company and if you consider an expatriate
career, it’s always good to have the headquarters in your country if you want ever to come
back or want to know the culture of your headquarters.
Analysing the timing of this trigger, we noticed that global managers only started to
mention the advantages of headquarters from the fourth career move onwards. This finding
suggests that global managers’ interest for working at headquarters comes from earlier
working experiences showing them the reality of international work.
Promotion opportunities
Third, our data revealed that some global managers (n ¼ 6) made hierarchical moves in
which promotion was the main trigger (n ¼ 6). This trigger of engaging in a vertical move
indicates that hierarchical career moves remain relevant in global managers’ career
realities. In some instances, these moves were the result of organizational requests to ‘take
charge of the division’ or ‘to manage a large strategic project for the division in Germany’.
For example, after having launched a product successfully on a national scale, a global
manager in Pharma Corporation accepted a promotion within a previous organization to
launch the same product on a global scale, which implied that she needed to move to
headquarters in Paris:
So I started quite smoothly, launched a product immediately. That went very well and it was
fun and then I went to their headquarters in Paris. So I did two years in the Netherlands and
then I went to their headquarters in Paris, as a promotion. I became International Product
Manager.
In a few cases, global managers themselves searched for opportunities reflecting a
vertical career move, for example in order to ‘manage people’. Or the trigger of promotion
opportunities sometimes entailed reference to the characteristic of internal values,
pointing out global managers’ preference for promotion. However, we categorized
promotion opportunities as an indicator of a hierarchical course in contemporary careers
because these quotes predominantly emphasized the vertical aspect and its implications
than the internal value as such.
Self-management
The third characteristic refers to global managers’ self-management of their careers. Table 4
presents the data indicating that global managers established new career moves triggered
by personal networks, proactivity and skill development which confirm global managers’ self-
management. However, the trigger of organizational changes contradicts this characteristic.
Personal networks
First, our data revealed that personal networks triggered global managers to make career
moves. This trigger (n ¼ 19) is an indicator of self-management as it results from global
managers’ personal initiatives to establish contacts that might, for example, serve as job
search mechanisms (Littleton et al. 2000). Fourteen global managers recounted how they
Table 4. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of self-management.
Trigger: Self-management Quotes

Confirming
Personal networks (n ¼ 19) ‘I got a phone call from this professor, my PhD supervisor,
who told me that there would be a position here at Pharma
Corporation that would become vacant as head of the
chemistry department’
‘What came about was the fact that this person spoke to
somebody else because he thought I was wasting my time
there and I got an employment with or an assignment with
another company’
‘Because an old friend of mine in PhoneCorp was the CEO
of this company in Singapore and he found my name and
proposed me that job’
Proactivity (n ¼ 18) ‘I grasped an opportunity when I knew that someone was
leaving an area management position, I asked, proposed to

take over his job’
‘When I applied back here, my goal was to, in fact take the
first, really senior position in my career’
‘I thought well it’s probably a good time to go back
and kind of leverage or capitalize on my US-experience here
in Europe’
Skill development (n ¼ 18) ‘Managing a big group of 60 people, so that was, when you
look on my resume, missing’
‘If I change my position, the reason has always been that I
was able to learn something new. And learning something
new, for me it’s a way of increasing my experience that
will allow me in turn to grow into another position’
‘When I applied from working with global marketing to an
affiliate, my goal was to become better operationally, and
understand how a big market really functions’
Contradicting
Organizational changes (n ¼ 42)
† Restructuring (n ¼ 26) ‘Then there was a reorganization and I became head of the
division’
‘They needed some folks to come to Germany and help an
integration and growth of business and I was asked directly to
take up an assignment in Europe’
‘And then again, 18 months after, I was fired from that
company, because they decided to refocus on the Asian
market’
† Growth (n ¼ 13) ‘They did a number of acquisitions, larger and smaller ones
and, in the end, in 2000 I was asked to head a number of
start-up companies in Silicon Valley’
‘And from there, until probably ten years later, I mean the
title changes and things like that but it was really, I would
call it, the organic growth of the function, in line with the
development of the company’
‘Two years ago, we acquired a product from our competitor,
and we needed about a year to turn the prototype into a
product. And midst last year, we started to produce it in
large quantities and then we experienced the need to develop
an organization around the product. And they asked me to
do that’
Table 4 – continued
Trigger: Self-management Quotes

† Project (n ¼ 3) ‘It was a contract for two years, extendable for a year, View
Corporation decided however not to’
‘After a while, Pharma Corporation decided to leave the
joint venture, because it became a predominant financial
investment rather than an industrial one. So I was lucky that
they wanted to keep me within the organization’
‘Well, it was just finished, and there wasn’t any other
product in the company to move to’
made a new career move through their contacts with people who introduced them to other
companies or alerted them to available positions. For example, a global R&D manager at
Pharma Corporation recounted how his network, and more specifically his ongoing contact
with his Ph.D. supervisor, triggered him towards a new position:

I found that doing fundamental research on its own was not the most satisfactory job to do.
The thing which simplified the . . . At that time, I was actually considering going back into
academia, I was in contact with a chemical professor at the University of Basel, or the
University of Zürich, and I was trying to find out what could be the next move to go from
industry into academia. And at that point I got a phone call from this professor, my Ph.D.
supervisor, who told me that there would be a position here at Pharma Corporation that would
become vacant as head of the chemistry department. And I remember that well, I had that
phone call on Thursday, on Friday I called the R&D director here at Pharma Corporation, on
Saturday I was on the plane and at noon I had accepted the position.
Analysing the timing of this trigger, we noticed that it only emerged in the career stories
from the fourth career move onwards. This suggests that the career competency of
knowing-whom takes some time, after which it becomes operational in alerting people to
potential new career moves.
Proactivity
Our data also revealed that several global managers were proactive in their career
development. We consider this trigger of proactivity (n ¼ 18) to be an indicator of self-
management because it points to global managers’ personal and proactive initiatives in
career development (Carlson and Rotondo 2001). Self-directing their careers, several global
managers in our sample (n ¼ 12) ‘grasped an opportunity’ and ‘asked, proposed to take over
a job’ when work challenges presented themselves which offered chances for (career)
development. Often, this proactive stance is opportunity-driven as recounted by a global
marketing manager at Pharma Corporation:
That was a three years contract, I prolonged it for a year and then just as I had done that,
something happened here with the guy who was sitting in my seat, leaving to Asia, so I applied
for the position here because it was really the ideal kind of next move for me and you know . . .
These kinds of opportunities only come along once every three or four years, so I thought I’m
not going to stick around in the UK longer, so I tried my chance and I got this position.
Skill development
Third, our data revealed that opportunities for skill development were a relevant trigger in
global managers’ careers. This trigger (n ¼ 18) is an indicator of self-management because
global managers themselves initiated this development as a means to heighten their
employability (Hall and Moss 1998; Savickas 2000). In our sample, several global managers
(n ¼ 13) were triggered to take a new career move because of its potential to add certain
skills that were ‘when you look on my resume, missing’ and ‘creates additional value
for myself’.
Organizational changes
Our data revealed, however, that organizational changes also triggered new career moves
(n ¼ 42). We consider this trigger to be an indicator of self-management as it points to the
organization as the agent in making new career moves, contradicting the recent career theory
of self-management. Overall, the majority of global managers in our sample (n ¼ 33) had one
or several moves in their careers that were triggered by organizational changes. First, 19
global managers referred to instances of organizational restructuring that triggered new career
moves (n ¼ 26), for example when ‘the company changed from a product-based towards a
market-based organization’ or ‘decided to refocus on the Asian market’. Such organizational
decisions impacted global managers’ careers as they were ‘forced to take up a different
position’. In some cases, these restructurings led to negative consequences such as ‘being fired
from the company’ whereas in other cases they provided opportunities, for example, when
they implied that, as a global manager recounted: ‘I became head of product management and
marketing’. Second, changes due to organizational growth triggered new career moves
(n ¼ 13) in 11 global managers’ careers as they created international opportunities.
For example, because of an acquisition, a global manager was asked to ‘manage a number of
start-up companies in Silicon Valley.’ Another global manager told us how ‘the international
growth of the organization implies international growth of my responsibilities’. Third, in a few
cases (n ¼ 3), global managers referred to a project-based organizational strategy that implied
a search for new opportunities when the project ‘is finished’.
Analysing organizational changes as triggers to new career moves in global managers’
careers, our data sample revealed an additional important finding worth mentioning.
The career moves triggered by organizational changes were often international in nature,
which for some respondents in our sample implied a switch from a local to an international
or global career move. Even when not actively aiming for an international position,
acquisitions or integrations for example ‘suddenly made me, it was a Saturday morning,
worldwide operations manager’. In these cases, the organization initiated the switch from
a local to an expatriate, inpatriate, commuting or global management position.
Driven by internal values

Our fourth and final characteristic refers to the internal values that drive global managers’
careers. Our data revealed four internal values by which global managers’ careers were
driven, as presented in Table 5. They are, in order of importance, family life, preference
for work environment, internationalism and technical/functional competence. The trigger
of remuneration shows that an external standard remains important.
Family life
A very important internal value in shaping global managers’ careers was family life
(n ¼ 30) (Patton 2000). First, the family was considered an underlying constraint (n ¼ 16)
with regard to new career moves. For instance, expatriate assignments were not being
considered ‘because it was not the right time for my family’. Other global managers
mentioned this value as a discouraging factor (n ¼ 11), for example when it was the
main reason to return from an expatriate assignment or to decide to switch from an
Table 5. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of internal values.
Trigger: Driven by internal values Quotes

Confirming
Family life (n ¼ 30)
† Underlying constraint (n ¼ 16) ‘Because of my family situation, that is a choice
I have made, that I cannot move abroad’
‘I am not saying that it will be impossible for me to
move, nothing is impossible, but my wife is engineer
too, so she has her own career. So for me, the best is
to have the roots here in Belgium’
‘Than I had a second baby and it became even more
clear that I wasn’t going to travel any longer.
So my career became more Belgian instead of
international’
† Discouraging factor (n ¼ 11) ‘It was not the right time for my family’
‘I wanted clearly to go back to some stability, also in

my career but in my life’
‘I still have my mother here, that is something that
weighted on the balance’
† Stimulating factor (n ¼ 3) ‘On the West Coast of the US, my wife liked the idea’
‘We decided to go for it, to broaden the children’s
horizon’
Preference for work environment (n ¼ 27)
† Organizational culture (n ¼ 18) ‘The difference between the two companies was quite
large in terms of culture’
‘I joined Pharma Corporation because of its openness
to achieve what you want to do’
‘I could identify myself with the company’
† Sector (n ¼ 9) ‘I liked the product and the service, type of activity
and also the fact that it was a growing industry with
a lot of possibilities’
‘I was attracted by the healthcare sector’
‘I wanted to go back into industry’
Internationalism (n ¼ 18)
† Position (n ¼ 13) ‘I was aiming for an international position’
‘It was an opportunity that they offered and I was
quite excited about the international aspects’
‘I did that because it was a worldwide responsibility’
† Organization (n ¼ 5) ‘the aspect of working in a large international
company’
‘I was attracted by their expat packages’
Technical/functional competence (n ¼ 9) ‘So that was for me a good mix of content-wise being
in a marketing environment again’
‘I was exposed again to a mix of finance and sales
and business development’
‘I had an additional degree in quality engineering, so
I started looking for a position in that area’
Fundamental career change (n ¼ 12) ‘Own choice, I could have stayed, but I decided after
four years that I wanted something different’
‘I prefer to do it a little slower now’
‘I guess I met the objectives that were set in getting
the product ready to launch, and so my interest back
then was to actually launch it myself’
Contradicting
Remuneration (n ¼ 3) ‘The intention at that time was primarily to make
money’
expatriate/global to a local position. For example, a marketing manager in Pharma

Corporation expressed how he asked for a local position due to the intense travelling that
was required in a global position:
So after a year I asked my boss if there was something available in Belgium to . . . , which still
allows me to continue my career, but also to get a little more schedule in my life and less
travel. And then I decided after six years, almost six years of intense, intense traveling, that it
was time to get more balance between being home and the job.
In only a few cases, global managers mentioned their family as a stimulating trigger
(n ¼ 3) towards an international position. Here, global managers mainly referred to
‘enlarging the children’s horizon’ as the most important reason.
Preference for work environment

A second internal value that triggered new career moves was individuals’ preference for a
particular work environment (n ¼ 27). We consider this an internal value as it points to
personal preferences related to the work context of organizational culture as well as a sector
through which a person– environment fit is promoted (Schneider, Smith, Taylor and Fleenor
1998). First, the organizational culture (n ¼ 18) determined 13 global managers’ decisions
to join, stay in or leave an organizational context. For example, a culture of
‘entrepreneurship’ or ‘openness of discussion, of relationships’ triggered global managers
to join the organization, whereas the experience of having ‘little room for participation or
ideas’ triggered global managers’ decision to leave an organization. In other instances, the
sector in which an organization operated (n ¼ 9) triggered nine global managers, following
their preference to work in ‘an industrial environment’ such as ‘the healthcare sector’ or
‘aviation and space’.
Internationalism
Third, our data revealed that 14 global managers referred to internationalism (n ¼ 18) as a
trigger for a career move. Again, we consider this an internal value because it confirms the
relevance of one’s central values in life guiding career decisions (Hall and Moss 1998;
Briscoe and Hall 2006). First, the ‘international character’ of a position emerged from our
data as an important value (n ¼ 13) that triggers global managers in their careers. Often, the
underlying rationale was to have ‘international exposure’ which brings ‘an extra challenge,
extra dimension that is professionally very satisfying’. Next to the position, the
international character of an organization (n ¼ 5) triggered some global managers.
For example, this marketing director consciously chose View Corporation because of its
international dimension:
Of course when I saw View Corporation, the ad, I was most certainly attracted by the
international character, because well, View Corporation, a Belgian company with international
fame.
Technical/functional competence
Additionally, the technical and/or functional area of competence in particular positions
triggered new career moves (n ¼ 9) for nine global managers. This trigger is an
internal value because it confirms that global managers’ work values guide their careers
(Sullivan et al. 1998). For example, a global manager referred to the functional expertise
of ‘being exposed again to a mix of finance and sales and business development’ as the
main reason for the career move.
Fundamental career change

Finally, our data revealed that 10 global managers made career moves because their
internal values were changing (n ¼ 12), which led to a fundamental career change.
For example, some global managers were triggered towards a new career move because
they reached a point in their careers at which they ‘preferred to do it a little slower now’,
‘wanted to stabilize’ or ‘wanted clearly to go back to some stability, in my career but also
in my life’. Others decided to make a fundamental career change in terms of their
functional domain for example when they ‘sort of had gone around the equity analyst job’
or when their ‘creativity was gone when you were doing this for too long’. When analysing
the timing of this trigger, our data revealed that it occurred from the fourth career move
onwards. This finding indicates that global managers’ values change over the course of
their careers, in which the fourth career move is a critical turning point. Fundamentally
refocusing their careers at this point in time might perhaps also point to a kind of midcareer
crisis.
Remuneration
Our data however also revealed that the extrinsic outcome of remuneration as a trigger
(n ¼ 3) still lingered for three global managers in our sample. This trigger reflects the
traditional external measure of success which is income (Baruch 2004), contradicting the
claim that contemporary careers are driven by internal values. For instance, a global
manager expressed that he had ‘the intention at that time to make money’ while another
one explained that he had chosen to work in ‘Switzerland because of the salaries’.
Discussion
Aiming to increase our insights on the nature of global managers’ careers, this study
examined whether global managers’ career realities reflect the flexibility proclaimed in
recent career theory. In this section, we reflect on our findings by discussing the
contributions of this study and its implications for future research and practice.
A balanced approach to career

First, this study contributes to the career literature by offering insights into a balanced
approach in which neither the extreme traditional nor the extreme nontraditional view on
careers exists. While the career literature has started to acknowledge the relevance of a
balanced approach (Baruch 2006), our findings empirically indicate which elements of
both views are combined in the career realities of global managers.
Within this balanced approach, Baruch (2006) argues that from the traditional view on
careers, moving up the hierarchy ladder, high earnings and gaining status or power remain
determining factors of people’s career success. Our findings confirm this argument.
Promotion opportunities, working in headquarters, and remuneration were in our study
important factors triggering a new career move. This suggests that individuals themselves
hang on to power and money, two traditional career aspects. Further, our study indicates
three other elements from the traditional view that continue to exist. First, global
managers continue to have long-term career goals that influence the direction of next
career moves. Second, organizations remain important in offering individuals new career
opportunities. Our findings indicate that it is especially organizational changes such as
restructuring and growth that triggered career moves. Third, this further implies that
global managers’ organizational tenure reflected more than one career move, pointing to a
certain bond between the organization and the individual, another element of the
traditional view on career.
Discussing the nontraditional elements in a balanced approach, Baruch (2006) suggests
that people choose organizations which match their own career needs and fulfil their
personal values. This study mainly confirms the latter. Compared to other triggers, internal
values were most frequently mentioned suggesting that this nontraditional career element
truly guides global managers’ careers. Of the different internal values, our interviewees
mostly referred to the non-work value of family life, either stimulating or constraining a next
career move. Family life as a dominant sphere may be due to our sample as working
internationally has drastic implications for spouses and children (Shaffer, Harrison, Gilley
and Luk 2001). The other internal values referred to three types of work values: personal
preference for a particular organization culture or sector, wanting to work in an international
context, and preference for a technical/functional competence.
Next to internal values, our findings showed the relevance of a short-term perspective,
a multidirectional career course and self-management strategies as three other
non-traditional career elements. Global managers’ career moves were on average short
in time (28 months) and sometimes triggered by the experience that work became a
routine. They were also lateral confirming that hierarchy, although it remains important, is
no longer the only means to achieve success. And finally, global managers were proactive
in their career development, considering opportunities for skill development as a reason to
switch career moves and relied on their personal network to do so.
Reflecting on the limitations of our study, we need to note that the importance of a
traditional career might be due to our sampling. This study took place in Belgian
organizations with mainly Belgian global managers, a culture in which employment
relationships carry the value of high loyalty (Janssens, Sels and Van den Brande 2003).
This strong emphasis on loyalty and long-term security might have biased our findings,
overemphasizing the traditional nature of global managers’ careers. Future research may
therefore benefit from assessing a balanced career approach in different contexts,
differentiating on high and low loyalty employment relationships.
The relevance of the balanced approach may also be due to the fact that our
respondents were in the age category of 35 – 50 years. Considering the time span of their
careers, these individuals might have experienced the transition from the traditional to the
non-traditional career era, explaining the mix of career elements. At the same time,
however, additional analysis of our findings showed that the youngest managers within our
sample equally valued traditional elements such as long-term career goals and promotion.
Further, the older managers were equally self-managing their careers through being
proactive and relying on personal networks. Nevertheless, future research may benefit
from studying only managers who started their careers in the new career era. This will
allow a more critical assessment of the balanced career approach as one can expect their
career realities to reflect more non-traditional elements.
Midcareer experience of reflection

Second, this study contributes to the career literature by reconsidering the meaning of
midcareer experience. While a midcareer experience used to reflect workers’ perceived
constriction of career opportunity in the narrowing pyramidal structure of the organization
(Hall 1986), this study suggests an altered meaning. Our findings showed that certain
triggers in global managers’ careers occurred from the fourth career move onwards:
long-term career goal, working in headquarter environment, personal networks and a

fundamental career change. Interpreting these findings, we propose that from the fourth
career move onwards individuals may encounter a midcareer experience of reflection. It is
especially the triggers of long-term career goals and fundamental career change that point to
moments of reflection in which the established career pattern is being revised and long-term
career goals formulated. From the fourth career move onwards, some global managers in our
sample considered career redirection, for example by making a fundamental career change
or defining a (new) long-term career goal for the future. We consider them to be radical
moves as they point to a revision of career frameworks. Personal networks and working in a
headquarter environment, also mentioned from the fourth career move onwards, seem to be
supporting conditions, making this revision possible.
Although the data suggest this experience of reflection, it remains unsure whether it
occurred in the midst of global managers’ careers. As we sampled within the middle
career stage (Hall and Mansfield 1975), we did not study global managers’ complete
careers in terms of the number of career moves. Future research can therefore benefit
from studying completed careers in order to determine whether this period of reflection
from the fourth career move onwards actually reflects midcareer and how it may alter the
course of global managers’ careers. Furthermore, future research may also benefit from
determining whether and when this period of career reflection ends.
Powerful role of headquarters

This study also contributes to the IHRM literature by further reflecting on the meaning of
new international work, in particular on global managers. A first contribution considers the
position of headquarters. When discussing the structural shift in the nature of global work,
the literature tends to emphasize equal power relations. For instance, Galbraith (2000)
considers transnational organizations as having a distributed power structure. In a similar
vein, Adler and Bartholomew (1992) consider a transnational manager to be someone who
interacts with foreign colleagues as equals, rather than from within clearly defined
hierarchies of structural and/or cultural dominance. The findings of our study however
suggest that this stream in theorizing does not correspond to the current organizational and
international reality. The global managers in our sample still perceived power to be
centralized in one single headquarters. As such, it is the most powerful decision-making
body in international organizations through which the large majority of career opportunities
come to bear. By working in headquarters, global managers found themselves in the
most powerful positions within international management, developing and coordinating
strategies worldwide, while making the most important decisions in business with
repercussions all over the world.
As headquarters remain powerful, future research can benefit from studying
headquarters’ influence on global managers’ careers more in-depth. For example, studying
completed careers might illuminate whether global managers remain at headquarters
throughout their careers or whether their positions at headquarters are a means to achieve a
career peak. In addition, future research can also focus on global managers in other centers
of excellence within the organization and examine whether their careers are different.
International motivation
A second contribution to IHRM literature considers global managers’ motivation for
taking up a position as global manager. Our findings show that some individuals became
global managers without ever having any previous international experience or aspiration.
In these cases, our respondents were directed into a global management position through
organizational changes or challenging opportunities that happened to be international in
nature. As such, our findings do not support the existence of a dominant internationalism
career anchor (Suutari and Taka 2004).
This lack of support in our findings may stem from our distinct approach towards the
global manager. While Suutari and Taka (2004) approached global managers as frequent
relocates, sampled within a group of Finnish expatriates, our study approached global
managers as executives with a worldwide coordination task. As different approaches
towards the label ‘global’ seem to yield very distinct research findings, it is of crucial
importance that studies on global managers, careers, organization or any other global
aspect clearly define their understanding of the term ‘global’.
Even if our approach may be the reason that many global managers in our sample had
no initial international career anchor, our findings raise interesting avenues for future
research. For instance, it raises the question whether the coincidental international nature
of a career move can lead to a particular career anchor, either in combination with other
anchors such as functional competence or replacing anchors such as pure challenge. Future
research can also increase our understanding of the international career anchor by studying
its content more in-depth. For instance, global managers in our study preferred working
internationally with regard to either the organization or their position. Future research
might consider whether such distinction leads to different meanings of the internationalism
career anchor.
Stability through flexibility

Finally, a third contribution to IRHM literature considers global managers’ flexibility.
Whereas this literature emphasizes the flexible and dynamic nature of recent types of
international work (e.g., Bartlett and Ghoshal 1992; Pucik and Saba 1998), our study
suggests that from another perspective, these practices also contain the opportunity to
bring more stability. Considering the trigger of family life, our data indicated that stability
in family life was an important reason to switch from an expatriate assignment to a
position as global manager as this latter implied working from a stationary home base.
In other instances, family life was an underlying constraint not to initiate an expatriate
assignment. As such, a global management position tends to bring more stability into the
family life in contrast to traditional expatriate assignments which most of the time
involves a relocation of the family. Global managers’ family life is only partially
disrupted in the sense that children and spouses are left behind in their native country for
only a limited period of time throughout which they can continue their education, work
and social life. In addition, organizations tend to increasingly make the distinction
between when it is necessary to physically be somewhere and virtually deploying
skills and knowledge (Roberts et al. 1998), which reduces the amount of traveling to a
minimum, often limited within the confines of a week. Global managers can therefore
attain stability for their family through carrying out flexible global work for the
organization.
Future research may focus on this paradox of balance between flexibility and stability
in new types of international work. They may for instance examine more in-depth the
individual tactics and strategies to achieve this balance between work and family life.
Or they can study the ways in which organizations support global managers to reach
family stability in exchange for flexibility.
Managerial implications
Drawing on our findings, this study offers managerial implications, both in the career and
international domain. A first implication is that organizations need to continue their role in
offering employees a powerful environment and position to work in. As our study confirms
that contemporary careers continue to entail the traditional career elements of money and
power, organizations may benefit from providing high earnings, status and power, for
example through a (somewhat flatter) hierarchy ladder (cf. Baruch 2006). They further
may not underestimate the attractiveness of a headquarter environment in terms of power
in strategic decision making and availability of a pool of international career opportunities.
A second implication is that organizations may benefit from actively matching the
consequences of organizational changes such as restructuring and growth to individual
career opportunities. As our interviewees indicated that several career moves were the result
of organizational changes, organizations may consider these changes not only to be business
but also career related. The turbulent organizational environment is in this sense not
a hindrance for a longer term employer–employee relationship, as mostly suggested

(Arthur and Rousseau 1996), but, in contrast, provides opportunities to attend to an
individuals’ search for new opportunities and skill development. Accordingly, contemporary
career management implies an active matching of business changes and training and
development policies through which organizational and individual needs can be aligned.
Third, organizations are advised to be willing to allow radical career moves,
potentially leading to a fundamental career change. As individuals can experience a period
of career reflection from the fourth career move onwards, organizations are likely to be
confronted with individuals searching for other career moves. If they want to retain
individuals and their knowledge and experience, they are advised to show openness for
periods of reflection and radical moves.
A fourth managerial implication is that organizations may benefit from actively managing
the balance of a stable family life in return for flexible global work. As stability in family life is
a crucial internal value for global managers, organizations are advised to support global
managers in creating a stable family life. For example, in return for the multiple business trips
and flexible work hours to communicate worldwide, global managers can be offered telework
facilities to enable them to restore the family–work balance.
Finally, our study indicates that important positions of worldwide coordination were
often performed by individuals having no earlier international experience and/or
motivation. Organizations may therefore need to provide such individuals with realistic
job previews towards the position and its requirements. They may also benefit from
offering them intercultural training in which potential global managers are taught how to
successfully negotiate and resolve conflicts across multiple cultures as this is the main
challenge for worldwide coordination. Such intercultural training is preferably also
oriented to the meta-cognitive component of cultural intelligence (Earley and Ang 2003),
rather than turning these employees into experts in a single foreign culture.
Conclusion
Studying the career realities of global managers, our findings suggest a balanced approach
to careers, only partially reflecting the proclaimed flexibility in recent career theory.
Although the career moves of global managers were rather short in time and they aimed to
break routines by making a new career move, the short-term perspective of contemporary
careers is balanced in this study by global managers’ long-term career goals, long-term
tenure in the organization and multiple career moves within one single organizational
context. In a similar vein, global managers’ lateral career moves confirmed the non-
hierarchical course of contemporary careers whereas their aim to work in a headquarter
environment and be promoted indicated the lingering importance of hierarchy in their
career development. In terms of self-management, global managers’ use of personal
networks as well as their proactivity in career and skill development confirmed recent
career theory, but was also balanced by the high impact of organizational changes such as
restructuring, growth or project work. Finally, our data indicated that the values that drive
global managers’ careers are predominantly internal; only remuneration occurred in our
findings as an external value. Overall, our findings indicate that global managers’ careers
are not an exclusive individual responsibility, but continue to be influenced by the
organization as the agent of several career moves offering opportunities in skill
development and marketability as well as money, status, and power. Taking into account
this interplay between the individual and the organization in determining the course of
global managers’ career paths will create more realistic career expectations for both
individuals and organizations.
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The career reality of global managers: an examination of career triggers

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The career reality of global managers: an examination of career

*Corresponding author. Email: tineke.cappellen@econ.kuleuven.be

ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online

Characteristics of contemporary careers

Driven by internal values

interviews (Kvale 1996), we aim to capture a richness of information, beneficial to

Three organizations in a transnational environment

Data collection: global managers

We formulated this type of question as it provides a facilitating context to speak

Table 1. Data analysis.

Characteristics of career moves

Table 2. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of short-term perspective.

Long-term career goal

significance of a longer term, contradicting the short-term perspective as suggested in

Table 3. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of non-hierarchical course.

Trigger: Non-hierarchical course Quotes

headquarters and decision power here’

Working in headquarter environment

Table 4. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of self-management.

Trigger: Self-management Quotes

leaving an area management position, I asked, proposed to

Trigger: Self-management Quotes

with his Ph.D. supervisor, triggered him towards a new position:

Driven by internal values

Table 5. Triggers confirming/contradicting the characteristic of internal values.

Trigger: Driven by internal values Quotes

‘I wanted clearly to go back to some stability, also in

expatriate/global to a local position. For example, a marketing manager in Pharma

Preference for work environment

Fundamental career change

A balanced approach to career

Midcareer experience of reflection

long-term career goal, working in headquarter environment, personal networks and a

Powerful role of headquarters

Stability through flexibility

a hindrance for a longer term employer–employee relationship, as mostly suggested

individuals and organizations.

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