Global talent management and inpatriate social capital building: a status inconsistency perspective

Abstract

Distinct to expatriate managers at the subsidiary-level, inpatriate managers' influence at the headquarter (HQ)-level is controlled by the extent to which an inpatriate manager is able to 'win' status from HQ personnel. The primary goal of the paper is to conceptualize how organizational support, in the form of global talent management (GTM) practices, can alleviate inpatriates' difficulties in building social capital at HQ. Building social capital at HQ is vital for inpatriates to attain status in order to build the inter-unit social capital that enables them to pursue their boundary-spanning role across HQs and subsidiaries. Status inconsistency theory is put forward to recognize the personal, professional and structural incongruence of events and activities at HQ carried out with respect to inpatriates. We argue that inpatriate managers become empowered at HQ only when social capital is accumulated whereby social capital is driven by an acknowledgment of inpatriates as a legitimate staffing option. The relationship between GTM practices and social capital building needs to be managed properly by inpatriates themselves as well as by the organization. A future research agenda helping to build social capital of inpatriates through GTM infrastructure is discussed and propositions are offered throughout.

Engaging in duty of care: towards a terrorism preparedness plan

“…For example, Harzing (1995) would suggest that 'a high failure rate is likely to discourage potential candidates, shrinking the pool even further ' (p. 458). In the realm of global talent management, shrinking the talent pool should be avoided at all cost to circumvent increasingly what appears to be a great talent shortage gap (Cappelli, 2008;Farndale, Scullion, & Sparrow, 2010;Moeller, Maley, Harvey, & Kiessling, 2016). This paper makes the point that a lack of organizational legitimacy regarding terrorism management increases the risk of IA failure as defined by the situation.…”

Return Migration

“…The huge diversity of migrant categories such as refugees, asylum seekers, sojourners, various types of expatriates, and diasporic migrants (Harvey & Moeller, 2009;Moeller, Maley, Harvey, & Kiessling, 2015) necessitates a close analysis of the distinct types of returns and returnees. In this article, we focus on immigrants with a 'pull' incentive (e.g., labor migrants) who migrated mostly for economic or sometimes educational reasons rather than the immigrants who are forced from their own countries and 'pushed' (e.g., political refugees) into a new environment (Ward et al, 2001), such as the major wave of Syrian refugees to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and more recently to various European countries.…”

Inpatriate managers: Are they being effectively utilized as global talent?

“…However, one way that MNCs have kept abreast of the growing demand for global talent is to increase their level of global transfers (Tarique & Schuler, ). The expansion of global transfers has fostered not only an increase in expatriation, the traditional form of international assignment from headquarters (HQ) to subsidiaries, but also other types of assignments, and in particular in the relocation of subsidiary employees to HQ, termed inpatriation (Collings, ; Harvey, Reiche, & Moeller, b; Moeller, Maley, Harvey, & Kiessling, ; Peterson, ; Reiche, ). Certainly, over the past decade, there has been an increased scholarly interest in the inpatriation of subsidiary staff into the HQ of MNCs (Collings, McDonnell, Gunnigle, & Lavelle, ; Harvey, Novicevic, Buckley, & Fung, ; Reiche, ; Tharenou & Harvey, ), reflecting a growth in the overall inpatriate population (Reiche, ).…”