Abstract
The rationale for multinational corporations is the creation and sustenance of global networks to increase profits by enabling market expansion. Since corporate executives facilitate the transfer of knowledge, processes and practices across borders, they effectively embody the globalizing project. Yet do these people, who are employed to make globalization work, engage in everyday practices that denote distinctly ‘global’ modes of being? The process of transcending national differences to facilitate capital mobility in global organizations is far from complete. Center–periphery relationships persist in shaping power relations within corporations. Moreover, these hierarchies tend to reflect power inequities between nation-states in the global economy. This paper comprises analysis of the ways in which executives reflect on their identities and interactions in light of globalizing processes in a multinational corporation. The analysis identifies three distinct modes of appropriating a global corporate identity that are borne out in these executives’ reflexive deliberations about their jobs.
Keywords
Introduction
Corporate executives are typically identified as the people who make globalization happen, and benefit from it, yet the ways that they interpret and produce globalization – in other words, globalization as a social practice – tend to be neglected analytically. In this article, we redress this imbalance through our analysis of executives’ accounts of what ‘going international’ in employment means to them. Since undertaking international assignments has become a pre-requisite of advancement to senior positions in many corporations (Ben-Ari, 1996), this process warrants investigation in order to understand what the everyday, social practice of globalization entails.
Amoore’s (2002) distinction between globalization as a process, project, and practice is useful here. Globalization as a process refers to the greater mobility of capital and labor that it entails; globalization as a project is the neoliberal agenda to enable heightened capital mobility which maximize the interests of multinational corporations and corporate elites. Finally, globalization as a practice recognizes the role of workers and other actors in producing globalization. She states that globalization is ‘not a single, universal and homogenizing process, nor is it a clearly identifiable strategic project. Rather it is uniquely understood and experienced by people in the context of their known and familiar social practices’ (Amoore, 2002: 2). Recognition of globalization as a practice explicitly acknowledges that it is not simply a process that happens to them but something that they are actively engaged in producing (Williams et al., 2013). Moreover, the extent to which people are able to purposefully adapt their everyday lives to benefit from globalizing agendas is informed by their status in existing global hierarchies. Doreen Massey’s (1993) account of ‘global power geometries’ effectively captures these hierarchies as follows: Different social groups and individuals are placed in very distinct ways in relation to these [global] flows and interconnections. This point concerns not merely the issue of who moves and who doesn’t, although that is an important element of it; it is also about power in relation to the flows and movements … some initiate flows and movements, other’s don’t; some are more on the receiving end of it than others; some are effectively imprisoned by it. (Massey, 1993: 61; original emphasis)
As Massey states, these unequal geometries are not simply about who moves and who does not but power in relation to the control of the movements of capital, information and people, globally. In this paper, our focus on the reflexive deliberations of executives about their lives and choices demonstrates how their perceived power within a multinational corporation (MNC) is shaped by the intersection of their national and professional identities. Our analysis shows that transnational employment does not do away with established global hierarchies between the so-called ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’. It demonstrates that where these coincide with what Hannerz (2006: 138) calls ‘center–periphery relationships’ – from the MNC’s London headquarters outwards – executives from the Global South are more likely to use their national identities symbolically as a resource to frame their corporate identities.
The paper comprises four parts. We begin by considering how national identities affect putatively multi-national corporations, despite globalizing agendas within them. We proceed by exploring how these processes affect individual actors, their careers and life choices. Archer’s theorization of reflexivity provides a theoretical bridge between abstract accounts of globalization and people’s everyday lives and choices. Through analysis of corporate executives’ reflexive deliberations about their jobs, we are able to show how three categories of difference, based on their distinct ‘territorial cultures’ (Hannerz, 2006: 107) and status with respect to the MNC headquarters in London, inform the discourses that they appropriate about internationalizing their careers. Finally, we conclude by discussing how these categories translate into contrasting modes of being a global executive.
Identity and difference in the global economy
Global capitalism both promotes and is conditioned by cultural homogeneity and cultural heterogeneity. The production and consolidation of difference and variety is an essential ingredient of contemporary capitalism …
An unanticipated consequence of globalization and the weakening of the nation-state has been the flourishing of cultural identities, as nation-states lose their ability to command and shape national identities (Berking, 2003). It is increasingly recognized that the forces that endorse de-territorialization and cultural homogenization are being resisted, actively in protest movements, and through the assertion of religious, ethnic and national identities that are, in a sense, a product of, as well as signifying the rejection of globalization (Robins, 2001). Moreover, although multinational corporations are typically identified as the agents driving globalizing processes, they have also become sites where the contestation and negotiation of cultural identities takes place. In Conradson and Latham’s (2005: 228) terms, they provide contexts whereby transnational actors are ‘emplaced’ – socially and spatially – as well as disembedded.
A shift in the cultural sensibilities of a transnational mover is, therefore, not inevitable. It is possible to move from a Radisson hotel in Hong Kong, to New York to London without so much as the bat of a cultural eyelid. In any event, it has been argued that the global world, and in particular the global corporate world, is marked by the origins of the nation-states with most invested in it; that globalization is essentially Americanization (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003). The anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (2006: 107) characterizes this disparity as follows: … the transnational and the territorial cultures of the world are entangled with one another in manifold ways. Most of them are in different ways extensions or transformations of the cultures of Western Europe and North America.
He continues by describing how transnational institutions ‘tend to be organized so as to make people from Western Europe and North America feel as much at home as possible’ (2006: 107) even away from their centers.
However, this account of global economy as an essentially Anglo-American world, dominated by corporate actors with their origins in Europe and North America is being challenged by recent shifts in global capitalism; namely, the rise of the East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies and latterly the emerging ‘BRIC’ countries whose economic growth far exceeds that of their occidental counterparts. In organizational studies, these recent shifts and the resultant tension between ‘global’ and ‘local’ in corporate strategies are demonstrated by processes of naming and branding. Jack and Lorbiecki (2007: 79) observe in the case of British companies: ‘several corporations have very publicly distanced themselves from their associations with British national identity’. They are largely concerned at this point with ‘corporate identity’, the self-image which a corporation attempts to project, rather than the individual identities of its employees. BT, BAE Systems and BP (not in their study) are all examples of ‘British’ corporations which have taken the ‘British’ out of their titles and re-branded themselves via acronyms. Thus, they refer to the ‘contested status of national identity in corporate life’ (Jack and Lorbiecki, 2007: 79). This move is not entirely welcomed by employees or indeed by some customers. It is not that employees re-assert some essential ‘Britishness’ of the organization but that, in some contexts, employees deploy national identity as a ‘symbolic resource’ (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003: 1074). However vaguely expressed, some employees continued to see Britishness as a marker of ‘legitimacy and trustworthiness and belonging’ (Jack and Lorbiecki, 2007: 86). And no doubt this is partly because Anglo-American corporations have long seen themselves as at the heart of the global enterprise; for them the national and the global are not opposed. At the same time others in their study reiterated the global corporate position, as one interviewee puts it: ‘We are a global company now … There’s no reason to actually consider ourselves to be British’ (Jack and Lorbiecki, 2007: 85).
The tension between the ‘national’ and the ‘global’ is even more marked in the work of Ailon-Souday and Kunda (2003) who speak of ‘the persistent relevance of national identities to the social reality of those engaged even in the most extreme contexts of global work’. Their case study is based on the period immediately after the merger of an Israeli with a US company where the Israeli company is really the senior partner and in effect incorporates the US company. They describe the inter-national merger as ‘one of the most widespread and potent forms of organizational globalization’ (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003: 1074). Their focus is the Israeli employees who are attuned to both the requirements of working in a global company and accommodating their new American colleagues. They accept the idea that they should politely suppress their Israeli-ness – for example, speaking Hebrew – in encounters with ‘the Americans’. But, especially among co-Israelis their shared national identity was actively deployed as a ‘symbol that secured the local organizational boundary in the face of globalization’ (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003: 1080). Accordingly, the Americans were viewed as less competent, less hardworking, more conformist, and rule-bound. An excerpt from a conversation observed by Ailon-Souday neatly illustrates the process whereby Americans are labeled to reinforce a superior Israeli work identity: ‘She may know how to write from left to right [in contrast to English, Hebrew is written from right to left], but any little thing that you ask her to do, anything just a bit unusual – she will not know how to do it’. (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003: 2082)
By contrast, the conversations of the Israelis betrayed an image of themselves as relentless in their work, more flexible and direct. The Israeli employees are aware of what the authors call a ‘global social hierarchy: the hierarchy which renders America and all things American as superior and powerful ideals’ (2003: 1088). But this awareness makes their own Israeli qualities all the more rewarding – they are better than the best! Ailon-Souday and Kunda (2003: 1074) conclude that, ‘in organizations undergoing globalization, national identity constitutes a symbolic resource that is actively mobilized by members for the goal of social resistance’.
From these studies of corporate national identities, it becomes clear that power is not evenly dispersed across nodes within multinational corporations. We contend that the capacity of actors to reflexively exercise agency within the corporation derives, in part, from these existing territorial inequalities between countries and regions. Moreover, despite the efforts of corporations to minimize the differences between corporate ‘nodes’ across the globe, in order to smooth transactions between them (Bozkurt, 2006), transnational executives remain ‘bearers’ of both national and corporate identities and symbols. These symbolic resources inflect the ways in which they understand their place in the organization and the world. They inform the ways that they talk about themselves and their jobs, and the ways that they make decisions about their futures.
Power, reflexivity and identity work
Archer (2007: 11) defines reflexivity ‘as that personal power to reflect subjectively on one’s circumstances and decide what to do in them or what to do about them’. Thus, reflexivity is not simply thinking ‘what do I do next?’ but involves internal deliberation, that is, literally ‘things being bent back’ or the ‘to and fro’ of an internal dialogue that requires ‘thrashing things out’ to work out a course of action (Archer, 2007: 2). She contends that the shift from modern to late modern society, which characterizes the latter two decades of the 20th century, has provoked: an increase in the scope and the range of reflexivity because of the growing number of novel situations encountered in the social order, whereby subjects cannot rely upon routine action as guidelines to appropriate action. (Archer, 2010: 297)
Incongruity between background and foreground is central to Archer’s thesis. She continues, thus, ‘especially over the last quarter century, socialization has been decreasingly able to prepare us for occupational and lifestyle opportunities that had not existed for the parental generation: for social skills that could not become embodied (stock market trading or computer programming) or needed continuous upgrading, and readiness to relocate, retrain, and reevaluate shifting modi vivendi’ (2010: 297).
In international labor markets, unprecedented career trajectories become the norm rather than the exception (Favell et al., 2006), thus, the onus is on individuals to be strategic and anticipate organizational and economic developments. As Adeyemo, 31, a Zimbabwean executive in this study puts it: [Cartwrights] is a constantly metamorphosising entity, it’s constantly changing … and to the extent that it does that, part of my future is caught up in those changes … but I understand I’ve got to take control over my life and I’ve got to drive my agenda.
These corporate executives are calculatively engaged in attempting to drive their own agendas amidst global economic uncertainty and resultant shifts in Cartwrights’1 ‘organizational design’. Furthermore, these shifts can render senior executives and directors in the organization obsolete if their capacity to respond to demand in the global marketplace is deemed insufficient. James, 45, a British senior executive in the organization, describes the ‘feeling of helplessness’ that ensues from these uncertainties. Nonetheless certain actors anticipate being able to get what they want, and drive the business agenda, more than others. In the analysis that follows we examine how existing hierarchies – both within the corporation and globally – shape these executives’ self-understandings and their identity work whilst working transnationally.
Researching transnationality: Comparing apples with oranges?
Our research participants were, or had recently been, international assignees employed by a multinational corporation on short-term and long-term assignments at the time that they participated in our online survey in May 2010. They do not belong to a single ethnic or national category. In order to investigate how differences are played out in the corporation, we introduce three categories that correspond with the ways in which global mobility is organized within it. These are: British headquarters’ executives; emerging markets’ executives and established markets’ executives (from outside the UK). We thereby compare the British transnational executives with those who are somehow ‘outsiders’ territorially. These categories reflect these actors’ relationships to the headquarters’ country, in terms of the citizenship of employees and their contractual status. The British executives were not necessarily based at the headquarters at the time of this study, but had worked there prior to ‘going international’. The latter two categories refer to executives who were recruited internationally either in the so-called ‘emerging markets’ of India, South East Asia and Africa or, what we call here, the ‘established markets’ of Western Europe, the USA, Japan, and Singapore. Yet rather than treating these categories as self-evident and presuming their salience to the ways in which putatively ‘global’ actors live, we set out to examine the categories that recur as meaningful to them.
Many contemporary studies of transnational professionals identify expatriate enclaves in globalizing cities as somehow representing exemplary ‘ethnic’ communities that constitute ‘bounded’ social fields for ethnographic investigation and analysis (Amit, 2007: 56). The premise underpinning some of these studies is the logic of comparing like-with-like in order to be able to identify and theorize difference when it occurs. The ‘field’ in complex, diverse and multi-ethnic settings is simplified and coded using ethnic categories. In not using ethnic categories in this study, but focusing on the accounts of executives who are defined by their employment, internationally, in a corporation we seek to ‘do away with the bias that unnecessarily privileges ethnicity as both an empirical focus of investigation and an analytical lens through which those investigations are conducted’ (Fox and Jones, introduction). However, we may, as a result, be accused of comparing apples with oranges. These actors are different because they are from different countries, regions, cultures and they are positioned differentially with respect to hierarchies in the global economy. They are perhaps inevitably different. Yet we contend that these two dimensions of difference – between nation-states in the global economy and center–periphery relations between the headquarters and ‘the rest’ within a multinational corporation – create parallel relationships to the headquarters that can be compared. As Locke and Thelen (1995: 359) contend: … studies that seek to compare the same practices or developments across countries (comparing apples with apples) without attending to differences in starting points … risk arriving at oversimplified, perhaps even misleading, conclusions.
However, ‘contextualised comparisons’ of cases that are ‘analytically analogous’ yet look quite different superficially (comparing apples with oranges) – ‘provide a different angle on these issues [that] can yield insights that would not be possible from the traditional perspective’ (Locke and Thelen, 1995: 359). In this case, the three categories we introduce shed light on the relationship between national identities, power relations and the personal reflexive considerations of transnational executives in a multinational corporation.
An online survey was launched in Cartwrights Global Bank in May 2010; it was designed to address the following themes: employment, mobility and work history; family, friends and social networks; and, identity, attachments and values. This data thereby provides evidence about multiple social fields and the interplay between personal and professional facets of employees’ lives. Participants were recruited via an invitation email that was circulated to 138 ‘international assignees’ that were either currently, or had recently been, working away from the headquarters in different country offices (n = 90); the high participation rate (72%) in the survey reflects the levels of engagement and interest in the themes that were raised. These executives were located in a number of Cartwrights’ offices, globally, including London, Madrid, New York, Dubai, Johannesburg and Hong Kong as well as less prominent regional offices in Northern European and African countries. These bases did not necessarily delimit the geographical parameters of executives’ work, however, since some jobs based at the headquarters and other offices often required regular travel to further sites, typically in the Global South.
Subsequently, 12 biographical interviews were conducted with professionals – who had taken part in the survey – based at three sites: London, Dubai and Johannesburg. 11 interviews were face-to-face and one was conducted by telephone. Interviewees were selected to represent the range of transnational professionals in Cartwrights by age, gender, citizenship, and employment experience. Since these interviewees were purposively selected, depending on their willingness and availability to participate, we do not claim that their experiences are statistically representative of the sample. Nonetheless, we contend that the patterns that emerge from this analysis are likely to be reproduced across global organizations and sectors. Given the limitations of the sample clearly further research is needed to substantiate our indicative findings.
Selected interviews are used as case studies here to situate the categories that they identify with in the context of individuals’ biographies, and attempt to offer explanation for them. These case studies help to illustrate some of the patterns that emerge across the survey dataset. In order to contextualize these case studies, we begin by introducing the survey data, hence setting the empirical scene. Two-third of the respondents are male, hence a third female. Just under half of the respondents are British headquarters executives (n = 40); just over a quarter are from the emerging markets of the ‘Global South’ (n = 24) and the rest are from established markets of the ‘Global North’ outside the UK (n = 20).
Three categories of difference
We contend that the events or circumstances that are narrated within interviews are more likely to emerge when the individual perceives herself to be at a crossroads in her career that warrants reflexive thought, in Archer’s (2007) sense. In our readings of interviews, we were particularly attentive to (a) the categories of identity that the actors deploy, and (b) whether these categories were somehow connected to their perceived power in the corporation. Our focus was executives’ responses the interview question: ‘Do you think you need to be a particular kind of person to succeed, internationally?’ In addition, follow-up questions about the skills or qualities needed to work internationally, and accounts of difficulties whilst working in different countries, were useful in this analysis.
British headquarters executives
In response to the first question, the British executives do not allude to or accentuate qualities that particularly delineate between UK-based and international work. They refer to their individual professional abilities, skills and qualities rather than specialist ‘global competence’. The skills and qualities they cite include: being hardworking (Jack, James), ‘numeracy’ (Charles), technical competence, as well as having generic communication and ‘influencing’ skills (James).
The expertise they carry with them often involves transferring or ‘rolling out’ – in their words – the policies and practices of the headquarters to peripheral bases and offices in emerging markets in order to ensure consistency and compliance with organizational standards, and national and international regulations. As a regional director, Jack sits on the executive boards of the bank in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Seychelles and Mauritius. He describes his team’s task as follows: Compliance’s job is making sure that the individual businesses adhere to the policy set in London for a variety of different functions …
Moreover since the headquarters remains the center of gravity in terms of decision-making power within the organization, these executives often envisage returning to the headquarters, rather than remaining at regional offices that are perceived as peripheral. Despite their influential positions in shaping global business operations from Dubai, Jack and Charles express frustrations about their lack of ‘empowerment’ there: Charles … the decision-making for me clearly is made in London and so, that’s pretty restrictive in terms of any true empowerment that you would have here … RD: Right and would you prefer to return to London for that reason. Do you have any …? Charles: My personal view is that … unless there’s another role that fits with my career plan and offers sufficient scale and empowerment then, you know, I think, career progression ultimately resides back in London.
Charles gained considerable international experience whilst working for multinational oil companies and another bank before joining Cartwrights. Working internationally is integral to his ambitions and career. He reports having undertaken 26 international business trips in the preceding year, and two international assignments in his career. The heightened level of mobility Charles undertakes is perceived as par for the course; he takes his ability to do business in different countries as self-evident: So it’s always been a strong driver throughout. I think, for me to go back to the UK and just be rooted to the UK, I think, that would be a backward step and I feel like … my role, at least, [should] have me on a plane, have me going somewhere to far flung places to conduct business.
In response to the question, ‘have you ever had any difficulties relating to communication’ on undertaking international work, he replies ‘No’. He proceeds by mentioning that taking a career break and travelling in Asia and South America was helpful in preparing him for the challenges of international working. For him, these challenges require, in short: Keeping your wits about you and getting things communicated.
He elaborates: I think you’ve got to expect the unexpected and not assume too much when you go to places.
His account of not being set in one’s ways resonates with many executives’ accounts of international working.
Nonetheless, Charles does not describe global working as posing particular challenges for him. Instead, he perceives internal politics and navigating the hierarchies within the organization as posing the biggest challenge: I think it really depends on the level of the role you are at. I think that the higher up [you are] the bottlenecks appear and the politics will mount basically.
Charles’ power within the organization is demonstrated by the confident way he anticipates his next position as one that encompasses ‘sufficient scale and empowerment’. He also states that should he and his wife undertake another international assignment: ‘The worst that could happen is, ok – something didn’t quite work out – right, ok, we’ll just go back to the UK’.
The ease with which Charles anticipates securing his next position contrasts with the accounts of Jack and James. Jack describes finding politics within the organization difficult. He describes his frustrations at being by-passed for promotion due to ‘internal politics’ that he was less-adept at handling: ‘that's one of the biggest things I learned from this because I'm not really political in that way, I tend to say it as I see it and I am not doing myself any favours’. Elsewhere Jack describes feeling ill at ease in certain expatriate settings, perhaps due to his working class background and being the first person in his family to go to university. Jack does not explicitly make this connection, but his perceived inability to perform politically may be due to the predominantly middle-class, expatriate, organizational setting which he finds himself in (Leonard, 2010).
Despite being a British senior executive, replete with middle-class credentials, James is acutely aware of uncertainty within the business and flux in its ‘organizational design’ that affects the security of his position. He has witnessed three of his line managers ‘exiting’, involuntarily, in the last 2 years. RD: Do you feel like this current assignment has influenced your perspective on work? James: I don't think it has, I suspect it's reinforced my view that businesses in general, and Cartwrights is no exception, are particularly ruthless when it comes to their people, so if they need us they will have us, if they don't need us they will get rid of us.
Thus, despite being representatives of the headquarters and putative ‘carriers’ of its power, these British executives are acutely aware of limitations on their power due to the lack of certainty that operating global financial markets entails. By describing going back to London as his default position, Charles, however, suggests that – in part – his perceived power and status within an international labor market is centered on the global city, rather than being an ‘organization man’ or Britishness per se. For James and Jack ‘going international’ is also a time-delimited project prior to their anticipated return to London. In this respect, being ‘at home’ in the global city and at the headquarters of the global organization, without a need for a work permit with the requisite know-how to organize housing, their children’s education and be close to family and friends is an advantage relative to their counterparts from established and emerging markets.
Emerging markets executives
In contrast to the British headquarters’ executives, who seem to take their capacity to do business globally as self-evident, expatriates whose citizenship lie in the emerging markets of the ‘Global South’ do tend to reflexively evaluate how their national identities inform their experience of global working. Adeyemo describes getting his first international position in the ‘developed world’ as follows: I was very excited when I left Zimbabwe to move to England in 2005. I was young and ambitious. Had done well in my country and wanted to do equally well in the developed world. My whole world changed overnight. It took me about 3-6 months, however, to realise that while I was excited about what was happening to me socially, I was regressing professionally with the first world not having the same appreciation for my aptitude that the third world had.
His perception of not being given appropriate work prompted Adeyemo to get an MBA from a prestigious, European business school. He continues: I found this quite frustrating and subsequently went to study at one of the world’s best and most expensive business schools so that people could acknowledge that I had cut the grade amongst their own. That worked.
Indeed from the outset, Adeyemo, describes his ambition to work internationally as stemming from hierarchies within the global economy and his resultant sense of insecurity: I always sat back and thought to myself it’s all well and good that I’m doing well here [Zimbabwe], but if I travelled and lived in another country, would I do as well in another country as I’m doing here? Or am I always going to live under the insecurity that somebody who has travelled or has worked in another country would always be able to come and take my job away?
Similarly, Devaraj is an Indian Senior Business Analyst who gained extensive experience of working internationally for multinational companies in India and South East Asia before commencing his current job with Cartwrights, London. Reflecting on his early ambitions, he describes his trajectory as typical of ‘any other “emerging market guy” who wants to do something interesting, challenging’. That is, he needed to get a degree from a ‘prestigious university’ first. In both these cases, it seems clear that prestigious credentials and national identity matter for executives from ‘emerging markets’ countries who are embarking on international careers. Moreover, they matter in ways that inform their reflexive deliberations about themselves and their choices.
When asked in the interviews whether ‘you need to be a particular kind of person to succeed, internationally?’ Adeyemo describes his ‘meticulous attention to detail and stubbornness about achieving that standard’ and Devaraj mentions firstly his ‘analytical ability’. Thus, as in the case of the British executives, specific professional competence is critical to their career development. Yet in elaborating on what they bring to the business that has enabled them to influence the organization, their cultural know-how and national identities also come into play. Devaraj frames this in terms of his ‘ease of approach’. He explains goes on to explain his personal style, philosophically, as follows: Maybe my culture. So that’s one thing and then if you put a smile to anything I will tell you half the problem is gone and you have to be going along the tide sometimes. You should not be crossing across the tide. The reason is otherwise you will not get into the shore especially with the senior stakeholders … You may have a right point but you should know where they are coming from. You should know how to handle that.
Here what Devaraj means by ‘my culture’ is ambiguous; it could reflect his personality, family, class, or caste. However, later in his interview he suggests that being culturally adaptable is ‘part of most Indians’: So it never bothered me to work with anyone, any culture, any type of people … If you ask, I worked with Americans quite a lot. Europeans, worked with Africans, Egyptians. It is more close to the Indian way of doing things. Very different, but we know.
Adeyemo describes the benefits of knowing how to communicate respectfully ‘with elders’ whilst on assignments in Tanzania and Nairobi. He notes that African colleagues are ‘very appreciative of a son of the African soil coming back and saying “Well hold on guys, let’s do this a little bit differently”’. He thereby illustrates how he consciously tailors his performance to actively demonstrate his intercultural competence in appropriate ways in different settings. His behaviour is calculated in order to gain respect and embody his status in the way that he carries himself. But being ‘comfortable in the boardroom’ is not something that Adeyemo takes as self-evident, but is a disposition that he explicitly sought to cultivate through his MBA. Both Adeyemo’s and Devaraj’s accounts suggest that they pay more nuanced attention to work-based interactions and cultural know-how than their British counterparts. Conversely, Leilah, an Egyptian MBA graduate, illustrates these dynamics by commenting on the cultural competence of her managers. She describes her current manager as experienced at working in ‘very different countries’, hence appreciative of – what she calls – the ‘differences of individuals’. In contrast, she found her previous manager immature and overbearing since he neglected the different perspective she brought to the business.
The metaphors that these emerging markets executives use to describe work interactions and politics reflect seemingly very different, yet parallel, perspectives on how to handle communication with clients and colleagues. Adeyemo describes ‘going against the grain’ in certain African business units and cultures, whereas Devaraj speaks about ‘going along the tide’. The use of metaphor in itself hints at ambiguities and subtleties within situations that prompt a degree of reflection. Moreover, despite describing himself as aggressively assertive in certain contexts, namely, Cartwrights’ African offices, Adeyemo appears to be conciliatory in other interactions: … if my boss came to me and said ‘Adeymo here’s an assignment’ and I didn’t want it, I could say ‘I absolutely do not want to go there’. Now when I do that I must know that there are consequences to that - which is that when the next one comes along he might be looking at me thinking, ‘Yeah all right, okay Ade, you want to try and cherry pick the nice ones. The fact is: this is work and someone’s got to do it’. On the other hand accepting a difficult assignment might be something that makes him look and say ‘Ade took a really tough one last time round, so I’ve got one that he would prefer this time around …
He has never refused an assignment, instead framing each one as an opportunity to learn; he concludes, ‘every country’s got something new to teach you’.
In these emerging markets executives’ accounts, the Britishness of the corporation is assumed, rather than accentuated. In response to an explicit question about whether she perceived Cartwrights as British, Leilah responds with uncertainty: the different thing is maybe it’s a bank that I am not sure about, it’s just maybe because they are British or maybe because it’s a bank, there is less clarity in general about things …
She reiterates that banking is very different to her previous experience in an ‘American’ multinational pharmaceutical company, but seems reluctant to label the organizational culture as British. In contrast, national culture is referenced more explicitly in one of the following executives’ account from established markets.
Established markets executives
Established markets executives are the most diverse in terms of region. Their countries of citizenship include Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the USA, Singapore and Japan. Accordingly, there are fewer reasons for these transnational professionals to share a commonality of perspective or experience. Yet as ‘outsiders’ at the headquarters, their work-based interactions may nonetheless reflect an ‘insider’ status acquired at other influential hubs within the global organization.
Annika, a Dutch citizen, was recruited at a senior level, having acquired considerable international experience in banking both within and outside Europe. Her job involves working in different business and country units, identifying best practice and implementing it in different settings. She frames this in transnational, neutral terms, as involving exchange across and between different country offices in Europe and Africa. Nonetheless, she notes that since the UK-based financial sector is ‘more advanced than in other parts of the world’, in practice, her job often involves the transfer of practices outwards from the headquarters.
Being based at the headquarters in London poses certain challenges for her. She explicitly characterizes herself as ‘Dutch’ and juxtaposes this with her account of what she does not like about her job, the politics: I’m Dutch, and we seem to be pretty direct and straightforward in our way of thinking and our way of interacting with people. And what I’ve seen in the last year – I’m just referring to my current job now – there’s an awful lot of political games of course taking place because this is the head office of [one] of the very big banks.
Political game-playing, competition for recognition and influence, and indirectness are subsumed within her understanding and experience of English ways of being at headquarters: So there’s an awful lot of people that come together and who kind of want to get their ideas and proposals pushed through. So then engagement has been interesting because of course, I’m not English, so I kind of approach things from a different angle.
She elaborates specifically on having difficulties understanding her line manager, which she has not been able to resolve: And the way that things are expressed here, sometimes you [are] already indirect, as well, it’s hard to actually grab the idea of the other person … it takes a lot of time to get information out of people.
Annika describes these challenges as being specific to the headquarters, and conflates them with her understanding of Englishness.
Unlike Annika, Gabriel, a Singaporean executive, does not identify himself with reference to specific national or cultural characteristics, but rather characterizes international working as integral to his career and his abilities: I decided that this particular role that opened up in Cartwrights was perfect because I’ve got to be in London but I’ve got to work with the UK, Western Europe [and] emerging markets in Asian and any new countries that we enter in future … Geographically its global, and I think that one of the things that I’ve picked up through my career is that … it takes something a little different to work with different countries and I guess I’m good at that so figured this role would be good for me.
Nonetheless the insularity of the headquarters, which he describes as an ‘ivory tower’ mentality, does not sit easily with him. Gabriel was recruited following an MBA at a prestigious US business school for Cartwrights ‘global leaders’ programme’. He had previously gained extensive experience as an international consultant working in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Gabriel’s and Annika’s accounts suggest that although London is the center of power within the organization that their capacity to influence its workings, and perhaps inherently English conservative character, may inhibit their ability to do so. In contrast, Mei, an American executive based in Dubai, enjoys her ability to shape and influence the organization away from the politics and power games at its center. She talks in a confident manner about doing her job well and having a high degree of autonomy in her current management role in emerging markets: ‘I have the discretion to go in and do what I need to so I'm almost running my own little world’.
Mei is an Asian American executive who gained her extensive experience in another multinational corporation in New York before being recruited by Cartwrights. Her first international assignment in Kuwait is described as a significant turning point in her biography, when she decided to ‘internationalize’ her career. Despite encountering prejudice in Kuwait and Dubai for international assignments as an ‘Asian race female’, this negative experience is integrated into her – largely – positive narrative about her cultural competence: I also think that it boils down to the person. And I guess luckily for me, being born in Hong Kong, [then] growing up in New York, New York is extremely multicultural, it wasn't a big issue for me to be communicating with people of a different culture. And then to have had that Kuwait experience [and] to have gone to school in Paris they've all kind of added up to that international aspect [whereas] a lot of people just assumed – whatever – just talk slowly to the person.
Mei accentuates the social and ‘multicultural’ aspects of her job, for which she believes she is well-equipped given her biography and background. Her account resonates with Gabriel’s, since she continues by elaborating on – what she calls – the indefinable ‘soft skills’ that are necessary to work internationally: First … those soft touches, like it's really hard for you to put your finger on what exactly it is – but some people just do not have that ability to communicate at that level – and I think pretty soon really you will find that the workplace demands more of those skills because obviously people are travelling a lot.
Nonetheless Mei’s account suggests that her encounters in the Middle East and other emerging markets reproduce a hierarchical ‘first world’ order. She describes how doing business in Kuwait and elsewhere involves spending a lot more time than expected explaining the ‘methodology’ to clients and having to go ‘over and over and over it again’. In the following account of a transaction that she was managing, her question to herself ‘What are you not getting?’ hints at an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction between those who ‘get it’ – namely, business people from advanced capitalist and established markets – and those who ‘just don’t get it’. Like in 2008 I dealt with the Russian acquisition that we did and there were certain times when I was communicating to the team and it's just like ‘What are you not getting right?’ It’s so simple … and it's just really trying to be patient and understanding where they're coming from, to be able to communicate with them.
Her own account of being someone who ‘gets it’ stems both from her biography and her capacity to navigate unfamiliar contexts from a position of power. It does not feature the ‘conciliatory’ strategies described by Devaraj and Adeyemo. Nonetheless, given her identity as an Asian American female, establishing her professional identity in transnational settings encourages her to adopt explicit strategies to ‘compensate’ for the de-statusing that she sometimes encounters.
Conclusion
We set out to examine, firstly, whether a distinctly global mode of being characterizes the everyday social practices of transnational executives in a multinational corporation. Our second question was about whether these actors’ capacity to purposefully adapt their biographies to benefit from globalization is constrained by their status in existing global hierarchies. The second question is thereby an extension, and specific elaboration, of the first. We use the crude distinction between the ‘established markets’ of the Global North and the ‘emerging markets’ of the Global South to provide a basis from which to explore the influence of these territorial hierarchies.
Our answer to the first question is, in short, no. Executives actively produce globalization in their own ways because ‘going international’ is a stepping stone to advancement in their careers. Yet the marked variation within and between each category of interviewees – British headquarters, established markets and emerging markets executives – confounds any theorization that suggests a unifying collective orientation that we might define as ‘global’. A look at the divergent perspectives of the British interviewees – Jack, James and Charles – demonstrate their idiosyncrasies in terms of personality, career trajectory, class background and demeanor. It is only through comparison with their non-British counterparts that an apparent national advantage can be discerned. The British executives’ accounts belie a shared confidence which underpins their ease at crossing borders. The established markets executives are equally confident about their capacity to operate transnationally yet simultaneously hint at their relative disadvantage whilst navigating ‘internal politics’ in the London-centered corporation. Likewise emerging markets executives’ accounts of their work-based interactions allude to some of the ambiguities of transnational working. The territorial and corporate power dynamics that they encounter place the onus on them to reflexively circumvent setbacks in their careers.
In global corporate settings, the image of the corporation depends on projecting a global, de-nationalized image – as Jack and Lorbiecki (2007) note – hence being genuinely multi-national. Nonetheless, everyday interactions reveal tacit hierarchies that affect both individuals’ career trajectories, choices and power relations within the corporation. These dynamics are played out in ways that are not territorially or nationally neutral. It is clear that all the executives in this study are aware of how social practices affect their power, influence and recognition in the corporation. However, the national identities and cultural know-how of executives are only mobilized as a ‘symbolic resource’ by those who perceive themselves to be ‘outsiders’. The Britishness of the corporation emerges in subtle ways, by shaping these executives’ reflexive deliberations about their jobs. Unlike Israeli identity in Ailon-Souday and Kunda’s (2003) study, British identity is present in mundane interactions in imprecise, often tacit ways. Thus, executives who are ‘outsiders’ because of their national identities, in relation to the corporation’s headquarters, find themselves navigating often oblique cultural codes, and requiring greater aptitude in dealing with cultural differences than their British counterparts.
Emerging markets’ executives may encounter prejudice in transnational workspaces. They thereby develop a sophisticated capacity to circumvent hierarchies – using a combination of assertive and conciliatory strategies in different domains. Adeyemo’s and Devaraj’s contrasting accounts illustrate how their transnational encounters provoke ‘identity work’ – or what we might call, ‘impression management’ – in tandem with their professional competence. Established markets’ executives provide a useful point of reference here. Their confidence, which stems from their status and background, infuses their interactions. Even so, they find themselves on the back foot in certain situations. Annika explicitly describes how ‘English’ ways of being and related ‘internal politics’ at the headquarters confound her as a Dutch person. Yet being from multi-ethnic cities, Singapore and New York, is explicitly cited as advantageous by Gabriel and Mei, respectively, for the ‘soft’ intercultural qualities it has endowed them with. Conversely, the British executives are remarkably silent about that aspect of their identities, their ‘roots’. Nonetheless, their territorial ties with London clearly are an advantage since they are employed in transferring practices and processes from the headquarters outwards.
Hannerz (2006: 138) uses the term ‘center–periphery’ relationships to characterize relations between ‘world cities’ and the rest of the world. We find that these territorial hierarchies are expressed in corporate executives’ biographies and the ways that they talk about their jobs. Accordingly, British headquarters executives tend not to reflexively consider how their national identity affects their everyday interactions across borders. The ‘bending back’ of reflexive deliberations, as described by Archer (2007), is provoked by internal organizational politics for them, but not their encounters with cultural difference. Whereas territorial ‘outsiders’ – emerging markets and (non-British) established markets executives – are socially ‘emplaced’, at the same time as being disembedded, hence draw on their national symbolic repertoires to confront the challenges that they encounter whilst working transnationally. In this ‘British’ multinational case study, established global hierarchies persist.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the input of the editors and reviewers, and – of course – our executive interviewees for sharing their personal stories with us.
Funding
The British Academy funded Ranji Devadason to conduct this research under their early career fellowship scheme.