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96 MOSHE BANAI (USA) AND WES HARRY (UK)

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Int. Studies of Mgt. & Org., vol. 34, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 96–120.© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 0020–8825 / 2005 $9.50 + 0.00.

MOSHE BANAI AND WES HARRY

Boundaryless Global CareersThe International Itinerants

Abstract: This study extends the description and explanation of boundarylesscareers to the global arena. It presents the case of a new breed of expatriate man-agers who are becoming more prevalent in multinational corporations—the inter-national itinerant. It defines international itinerants, describes elements typical totheir career management, proposes possible differences in career managementbetween traditional expatriate managers and international itinerants, delineatesthe advantages and disadvantages to the organization and to the individual man-ager of their employment in multinational corporations (MNCs), and offers propo-sitions regarding these itinerants’ career management. Finally, implications forthe research of career management and for MNCs’ officials and international itin-erants are suggested.

Expatriate managers have traditionally been classified from the organization’sperspective. Previous classifications have used the manager’s country of origin(home, host, or third) or the home office region (the United States, Europe, Japan)as the standards for comparison. Others have used the manager’s internationalassignment’s length of time, or frequency of traveling, as the classification crite-rion. Current classifications have used the level of the expatriate’s organizationalcommitment or entrepreneurial spirit as the criteria for the classification of thedifferent types of expatriate managers.

Our recent research reveals that a new category of expatriates has emerged in

Moshe Banai is professor of management at the Zicklin School of Business, BaruchCollege, City University of New York, One Bernard Baruch Way, New York, NY 10010(tel.: 646-312-3631; e-mail: [email protected]). Wes Harry is an advisoron human resources development in a major Middle Eastern Oil Company (e-mail:[email protected]). A shorter version of this paper was presented at a Work-shop on Strategic Human Resource Management, Linz, Austria, 2002. The authorsthank Cameron Gordon for his suggestion to use the term “international itinerant.”

BOUNDARYLESS GLOBAL CAREERS 97

the form of itinerants with boundaryless global careers—that is, professional man-agers who are characterized by a career identity that is independent of the em-ployer, who unilaterally take charge over their careers, and who are employed fortheir ability by at least two independent organizations in at least two differentforeign countries.

Available theories and models of career development have a limited ability todescribe and explain international itinerants’ careers. Hence, we integrated theconstructivist and objectivist approaches to career development to provide a theo-retical background for the concept of boundaryless careers. We classified a num-ber of categories of international itinerants and use the new classification to extendthe concept of boundaryless careers to the international milieu.

Traditional and boundaryless careers

The field of categorizing career development has two general groups of theories :the “established theories” and the “emerging theories” (Brown and Brooks 1996).As a response to cultural changes in careers, Savickas (2000) used the terms“constructivist” and “objectivist” to name the two major schools of thinking.

The objectivist school of thinking tends to focus primarily on a linear and ratio-nal methodology in defining knowledge (Peterson and Gonzalez 2000; Savickas1995b, 2000; Zunker 2002). Established career theories, such as Holland’s (1997)personality type theory and Dawis and Lofquist’s (1984) theory of work adjust-ment, are key representatives of the objectivist school of thinking. Other estab-lished theories, such as Super’s (1990) life-span, life-space theory; Gottfredson’s(1996) theory of circumscription and compromise; and Krumboltz’s (Mitchell &Krumboltz 1996) social learning theory, bear considerable influences from thisworldview.

The constructivist school of thinking is the foundation of emerging theoreticalmodels in career development. These models include Young, Valach, and Collin’s(1996) contextual explanation of career, Cochran’s (1990, 1997) narrative approach,and Savickas’s (1993, 1995a, 1997) constructivist approach. Other emerging mod-els, such as Brown’s (1996) value-based, holistic model; Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s(1996) social cognitive framework; Betz’s (2001) self-efficacy model; and Pattonand McMahon’s (1999) systems theory approach are connected with and reflectfeatures of social constructivist philosophy.

Both objectivist and constructivist schools have been developed to describe,explain, and predict domestic rather than international career management, andthey assume that an individual’s career has been fixed into the service of one, orvery few, organizations. Individuals had, therefore, to try to achieve their careergoals by accommodating organizational objectives and processes. This approachhas led to managers being rewarded in pay, promotion, and status dependent uponloyalty to the organization, which inhibits them from moving to other employers.Over the years of their employment, managers develop skills that are organization


specific, and whenever they need to refresh their knowledge and skills, they haveto negotiate with their employers to be assigned to formal training programs on oroff the job. Eventually, this model has led to managers developing their careers inone or two organizations where career success is measured by comparing theirprogress with others in terms of relative age and seniority (Sullivan 1999).

Since the 1980s, these assumptions have changed drastically. Globalization,restructuring, downsizing, reorganizing, and outsourcing have transformed busi-ness, and the structure of the workforce has also changed. Many staff, especiallywomen, would prefer to work on part-time, flextime, or time-sharing bases. Jobshave been redesigned in terms of projects and teams requiring employees to bemultiskilled.

These changes have increased involuntary turnover and intercompany move-ments (Inkson 1995). Moreover, the relational psychological contract of employ-ees with the organization has turned into a transactional contract (Rousseau 1995).Organizational commitment has been replaced by a business transaction. The im-pact of de-layering, downsizing or rightsizing, has diminished the ties and loyaltyto employers (Thomas and Dunkerley 1999). Employees have embarked on pro-fessional and entrepreneurial careers (Kanter 1989) and sought to satisfy theircareer objectives in and out of the organization (Hall 2002). Boundaryless careershave become predominant (Arthur and Rousseau 1996).

“The typical boundaryless career is characterized by a career identity that isindependent of the employer (e.g., ‘I’m a software engineer’); the accumulationof employment-flexible know-how (e.g., how to work in an innovative, efficient,and/or quality-enhancing way); and the development of networks that are inde-pendent of the firm (e.g., occupation or industry based), non-hierarchic (e.g.,communities of practice), and worker enacted” (DeFillippi and Arthur 1996,123–24).

Under this paradigm, employees unilaterally take charge over their careers.They seek employment that enables them to achieve excellence and that allowsenough flexibility to manage their own career’s progress. They make sure thatthey are regularly trained and developed at work so that their skills are transfer-able, and they are not shy of working for a series of organizations that need theirup-to-date skills. Finally, the boundaryless career managers judge success by ex-periencing psychologically meaningful work (Arthur, Claman, and DePhillippi1995; Sullivan 1999).

Waterman, Waterman, and Collard (1994) describe this situation as a career inwhich high levels of commitment exist for the period of the mutually beneficialrelationship, and in which interorganizational mobility—initiated by either party—is expected to occur, rather being seen as disloyalty or betrayal. Kanter advocated“employability security,” that is, “the knowledge that today’s work will enhancethe person’s value in term of future opportunities” (1995, 157).

While the boundaryless career phenomenon has been investigated (Inkson 2004),its application to the international milieu has scarcely been discussed, and then


mostly from the organization’s point of view (Sanchez, Spector, and Cooper 2000;Stahl, Miller, and Tung 2002). This study uses the example of the internationalitinerant to analyze boundaryless career management and to describe the advan-tages and disadvantages of this type of career management for the multinationalcorporation (MNC) and the individual manager. We start by describing the wayscorporations have classified international managers and demonstrate that interna-tional itinerants do not belong to any of these classifications. We then define anddescribe international itinerants, assess their advantages and disadvantages for theemploying corporations and for the managers, identify the differences betweenthem and the traditional expatriate managers, and use this group of managers andprofessionals to offer a global boundaryless career management model.

Classifications of international managers

Traditionally, corporations tend to classify international managers by their posi-tions in their corporations’ structure or by management processes. Place within theorganizational structure is being used when the MNC classifies its managers basedon their country of origin: (1) home-country nationals that include officials atheadquarters and expatriate managers in subsidiaries of MNCs; (2) host-countrymanagers in subsidiaries of MNCs; and (3) third-country managers in subsidiariesof MNCs who do not possess home-country or host- country nationality (Zeiraand Banai 1984). Structure is also used to classify expatriate managers into twotypes: those who are assigned from headquarters in the home country to the sub-sidiary in the host country, mostly for control purposes, and host-country manag-ers who are assigned to the headquarters of the MNCs, mostly for training purposes(Banai 1992). Others have suggested that U.S., European, and Japanese managerscould be differentiated regionally rather than by national citizenship (Tung 1982).

Processes are used to classify four types of home-country managers in subsid-iaries of MNCs, based on the amount of time and frequency of traveling the man-ager does to the subsidiaries. The first type includes the international managerswho are headquarters officials, constantly on the move but seldom away fromtheir bases for more than a week at a time. The second type includes expatriateswho are globe-trotting in order to promote themselves into secured high-levelpositions at headquarters. The third type includes the technical specialists who areoften away from their bases at headquarters for various lengths of time but whoare expected to spend at least six months per year at headquarters. Last are theoccasional parachutists who make two or three short trips abroad each year forthe company because of their highly specialized expertise (Torrington 1994).

Many scholars, mostly European, approach the issue from a corporate strategicviewpoint rather than from the individual manager’s personal one, and they arguefor the need of boundaryless (Stahl et al. 2002) or nationality-less organizationswhere there is no real distinction between international and domestic managers,because, regardless of their positions, most managers are exposed to international


business (Barham and Antal 1994; Calori and Dewoot 1994; Kirkbride 1994;Mayrhofer et al. 2004; Selmer 1995).

Stroh et al. (2005) have classified global managers based on their organiza-tional commitment: expatriates who leave their hearts at home (allegiance to theparent firm), expatriates who “go native” (allegiance to the local firm), expatriateswho see themselves as dual citizens (allegiance to both firms), and those who seethemselves as free agents (allegiance to no firm).

Yet another group of studies analyzes the phenomenon of expatriation from acareer management perspective. Peters advocated the model of the independentcontractor “who lives by the seat of the pants; whose professional existence de-pends on word of mouth endorsements from clients; who regularly adds to herportfolio of marketable skills; who routinely delivers on time, creatively, for acompetitive price” (1994, 95–96).

We have described MNCs’ traditional classifications of international managersand demonstrated that the group of international itinerants could not uniquely beclassified within any of those typologies. The next section operationally definesinternational itinerants and describes them and the difficulty in identifying them.

International itinerants

We define international itinerants as “professional managers who over their ca-reers are employed for their ability, by at least two business organizations that arenot related to each other, in at least two different foreign countries.” This defini-tion excludes other professionals, such as medical staff or teachers and technicalor ancillary staff, athletes, musicians, and other artists, journalists, and contractualwriters who may also be part of the international itinerant workforce.

There is no official counting, or even a good estimation, of the numbers ofinternational itinerants, and we can only provide examples for small samples towhich we have had access. The first example is that of a British airline in BruneiDarussalam that had 120 or so expatriates out of 750 staff, and only the manage-ment contained seconded staff. All the others were independent expatriates (pilots,engineers, and mechanics), and many we would now classify as itinerants. In 1981,the management team had seven members, with two seconded managers. Fouryears later, the only expatriate managers were the flight operations manager andthe engineering manager, both of whom were independent itinerants. All the othermanagers were locals.

The second example is that of the members-list of the current British BusinessGroup in Kuwait that is comprised of 120 names. Of those, around 21 are expatri-ates who are permanent employees sent abroad by their employers, including fiveBritish government officials. About 15 of them are international itinerants (man-agers and other professionals). These two cases highlight the possible increase inthe numbers of international itinerants.

The numbers of international itinerants have increased as a result of the com-


petitive pressures of globalization causing organizations to look for talent wher-ever it exists, regardless of the nationality of the person. Successful globalizationrequires the knowledge, awareness, and skills to negotiate in different cultures,manage groups with multicultural memberships, and “read” the environment ofeach country where the company operates (Adler 1997). International itinerantsalmost by definition have the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary.

At the same time, the role of the international itinerant has developed becausefewer people are prepared to follow the traditional expatriate’s career. Many expa-triate assignments do not seem to have positive effects on the development of amanager’s career at corporate headquarters. Expatriates are often neglected on theirreturn to their home bases, put on hold, and not valued for their international experi-ence by their firms (Adler 1981; Feldman and Thomas 1992; Harvey 1989; Tung1981). It is important to note that all of these studies deal exclusively with U.S.expatriates, although career management may vary according to the national cultureof the individual (Granrose 1994). However, Harry (1998) discovered that an inter-national bank, which is one of the most highly regarded employers of expatriates,wasted the experience and expertise gained by returning managers by neglectingtheir assimilation back into the parent organization in the United Kingdom.

Disillusionment with career progress in MNCs, of both potential internationalmanagers and expatriate managers who completed their assignments successfully,caused them to embark on independent careers and become international itinerants.

International itinerants are widely scattered and are not easy to find. They andthe headquarters of the employing organization are often reluctant to publicizethat they have foreign managers, and the latter are not always fellow nationals ofthe researchers. Therefore, the researcher has to establish contacts with individu-als and persuade them to speak about their experiences with no help from theemployers.

Using our personal contacts, we identified and interviewed over 30 interna-tional itinerants in the Middle East and 15 in the Far East (Shanghai). The fact thatmost of them were Western men might be a consequence of the ability of Westernmanagers to transfer technology and management skills unavailable in host coun-tries. But it might also be because the authors, as male citizens of the West, havenot yet been able to tap into many sources of information about other groups. It islikely that females and citizens of other countries will become more numerous inthe future.

After defining the international itinerants and presenting the difficulties in iden-tifying and approaching them, we provide a classification that may be used as afirst step in understanding their career management principles and patterns.

A classification of international itinerants

Many of the international itinerants were originally employed by an internationalorganization (Stroh et al. 2005). Some were posted to locations that suited them so


much that they may have been seen as having “gone native” or came to be identi-fied with the host country rather than the home organization (Bedi 1991). Othershave found that upon return to their home countries, there were no positions forthem to fill in the parent organizations (Banai 1991). A few have never worked foran international organization but have gone abroad directly from domestic em-ployment. The international itinerants can be grouped into several types of man-agers: “failed” expatriates from international business organizations, managerswith unique expertise, cosmopolitan professionals, mavericks, returning nation-als, and novelty seekers. These types are not mutually exclusive, and one interna-tional itinerant may belong to more than one type at any time. Moreover, becauseof the lack of previous studies on this topic, the classification is nominal.

Failed expatriates

Some international itinerants who prefer to remain abroad have “failed” in termsof their employing organization but not necessarily in terms of their own careers.Often, such “failed” expatriates prefer the autonomy and responsibility the inter-national itinerant work and lifestyle can provide and that the employers of tradi-tional expatriates cannot offer. Many have become frustrated with the unreasonabledemands of the head office and set off on their own paths.

Undoubtedly, some of these people enjoy the apparent respect and ease that wasso well described by Joseph Conrad in the nineteenth century and that we are surestill exist in the twenty-first century: “The majorities were men who, like himself,were thrown there by some accident, and had remained as officers of country ships.They had now a horror of home service, with its harder conditions, severer view ofduty, and hazards of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of East-ern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck chairs, large native crews andthe distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and ledprecariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge ofengagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes—would have served the devilhimself had he made it easy enough” (Conrad 1900 [1994], chap. 2).

Unique expertise

Some of the international itinerants resemble the medieval masons who movedaround the cities of Europe building cathedrals. These people gained expertise anddeveloped talents that it would take others decades to acquire but for whom it wasnot worthwhile acquiring a skill if their city was only going to build one cathedral.The present-day equivalents include aircraft builders who job shop from contractto contract following work gained by whatever company was awarded an aviationproject. As the demand for expertise grows in a world that has a global outlook,some individuals have been able to find a ready international market in which theycan sell their technical expertise without relying on an employer from their home


country. Generally, but not always, these international experts have the ability towork with a diversity of ethnic and national groups and to transfer their technicalexpertise across cultures. Host-country employers value the ability to get skillswithout having to enter a relationship with another organization, particularly if theother organization is seen as having power or connections that are potentially threat-ening to the local employer. The expertise of these international itinerants has tobe kept up to date, or their value will quickly decline.

Cosmopolitans

Some international itinerants are professionals with knowledge, skills, and abili-ties that are applied in a cross-cultural setting (Tung 1998). With these individuals,it is often the international milieu that is the attraction. They would be bored ifthey were based in one place and could not move regularly. Many internationalitinerants spent a significant part of their childhood or young adult years as expa-triates. Their parents might have been in the military or been traditional expatri-ates. Or these itinerants may have been in the Peace Corps or undertaken othervoluntary work abroad after university. The lifestyle these youngsters had experi-enced cut them off from their domestic peers so that they found it easier to relate toforeigners or other itinerants than to fellow citizens at home.

The cosmopolitans’ willingness and ability to work in a wide variety of situa-tions are highly sought after, as these people can better cope with culture shock.Often, they are keen to go to places where a traditional expatriate would demandvery high pay and benefits to persuade them to move. Whereas other expatriatesfear losing contact and connections with the head office (and the promotions andrewards available there), the cosmopolitans prefer the wandering life.

Mavericks

Some international itinerants have a set of personal and professional capabilitiesthat are currently seen as being valuable by their employers. Their employers donot provide them with training, except as an incidental by-product of their day-to-day activities. The attitude of the employer is usually to buy them to get thingsdone, and then throw them away. These mavericks come in to accomplish a spe-cific task or project. They differ from those with unique expertise in that it is the“self-management” rather than the expertise that is valued. They do not have to bedirected and are not “high maintenance” in terms of senior management directionor control. They are given broad directions and are then expected to deliver ontime and on budget.

Some MNCs have a large cadre of contractual international professionals whoare recruited for special projects. One information technology (IT) company em-ploys approximately 100 international itinerants out of a group of 1,400 expatriatemanagers (interview with an IT director in Brussels, June 10, 2003).


Returning nationals

Some international itinerants are returning nationals who should be a valuablesource for employing organizations but who have been disillusioned by their treat-ment upon returning home. They include students and managers who have emi-grated from their home country to a foreign country (usually from a developingcountry to a developed one) to acquire some education or special training or topursue a career. However, when they return to their home country, they usuallyfind that they are paid less than expatriates (who may have the same qualificationsand experience), just because they are nationals. The practice is prevalent in partsof Southeast Asia and China and is likely to be the situation in other places. Forexample, in Brunei Darussalam, those sent abroad for further study and qualifica-tions lost seniority to those who stayed at home and served time, so they ended upwith less pay than the less-qualified staff members who stayed at home (Colcloughand Godfrey 1982).

In addition, returning nationals may face another difficulty when returning totheir home countries—the reactions of their friends and family. It is an issue offace losing. “There are parents who had been bragging to their neighbors that ‘ourson is a big shot at Microsoft and got his Master’s at Stanford and Ph.D. at MIT.’But now he comes back home and it is a loss of face. The neighbors say ‘you werein the big leagues there.’ They see coming home as a step down” (Curry 2005).

Resentment at such maltreatment and face losing have led some returning na-tionals to become international itinerants in neighboring countries, where they aretreated as expatriates with all the benefits that accrue. Eventually, some find thatthey adapt to being international managers and become international itinerants.This is a loss to the home organization and to the home country that could haveused these managers to disseminate knowledge and attitudes more easily becauseof their shared nationality or ethnic background. As a thirty-five-year-old maleAmerican now posted in Shanghai (China) put it: “I worked for a U.S. interna-tional company in Japan for three years but since I was employed locally I was notreceiving the same salary and benefits as U.S. expatriates who worked with me. Ithen decided that I would be better off in Shanghai, where I could offer my exper-tise to any foreign organization, thereby securing better rewards.”

Novelty seekers

Some international itinerants no longer feel they are closely connected to theirhome countries. They still have a passport and citizenship but feel part of a widercommunity, so they seek employment in places and organizations disconnectedfrom the parent company or home country. Often, they will have a partner from adifferent race, religion, or nationality that gives them access to another commu-nity and sometimes closes them off from the community in which they were raised.

Similar to the cosmopolitans, these novelty seekers enjoy working in a variety


of cultures, but these two groups differ in their motives. While cosmopolitans selltheir professional expertise to be applied in different cultures, novelty seekers usetheir acquired skills to enable them to work in different cultures. We found manyexamples of this type of international itinerant, such as former students who mar-ried spouses from the countries in which they studied and who chose to work incultures similar to the homes of their partners, such as, converts to Islam whochose to work in Arab countries, and those who have “fallen in love” with a regionand developed knowledge of its history, geography, and nature, and who seekways to continue to live in the area to extend their knowledge. These internationalitinerants are not motivated particularly by money but are motivated by the oppor-tunity to live in a range of countries. They are not settled in one country but willmove around in a region or will consider the whole world as a potential work-place.

We have defined and classified the various types of international itinerants as agroup that is different from the group of traditional expatriate managers. Next, weidentify the advantages for the employers recruiting this group of managers andprofessionals as compared with those employing expatriate managers.

Advantages for employers

International itinerants offer advantages to employers that could not be offered bytraditional expatriates. Ten advantages are presented below.

First, cost reduction is one of the main reasons MNCs use alternatives to expa-triation, including virtual-team assignments and telecommuting, short-term as-signments, business trips, cross-border commuting, interregional travel, frequentflying, rotational assignments, and host-country nationals (Cendant 2001; GMACGlobal Relocation Services, National Foreign Trade Council [NFTC], and Societyfor Human Resource Management [SHRM] Global Forum 2001, 2002; KPMG2003; PricewaterhouseCoopers 2000, 2001). This motive could also be extendedto the employment of the international itinerant, who is, under many circumstances,more efficient and therefore cost-effective for the MNCs, as indicated in the fol-lowing advantages.

Second, international itinerants are temporary resources, who are responsiblefor their own careers and who expect little support from their employers. In takingcharge of their careers, they help employers avoid the problems associated withworking for both a parent and host organization. It has been shown that expatriatesserving two masters can rarely satisfy both (Banai and Reisel 1993; Black andGregerson 1992; Mayrhofer et al. 2004). The temptation is to serve the parent inthe hope of career advancement at headquarters or in another affiliate organizationor to serve the local employer and be accused of going native, with the long-termcareer risk that implies. Most expatriates will at least waver in their loyalty tohome or to host organization. But if the parent and local are the same, then loyaltyis not divided, and the international itinerant is expected to give undivided loyalty


to the host-country subsidiary. The international itinerant is usually happy to makethis commitment, because career advancement and continued current employmentdepend on satisfying the senior management of the host-country subsidiary andbuilding upon this to move on to the next job in another organization.

Third, the “one master” situation means that the pay and conditions offered aredecided based on the local circumstances rather than on referring back to somenotional base pay in the expatriate’s home country. The international itinerant ispaid whatever is mutually suitable for the job to be done “now.” Often, an interna-tional itinerant will be more expensive than a traditional expatriate in terms ofsalary and immediate benefits, but there are no long-term commitment costs, suchas pension, permanent health coverage, redundancy pay, transfer allowances, orthe expense of paying salary until a new job is found. When the job or service is nolonger required, the international itinerant can be paid off, and the employmentrelationship ends. The employer does not have to look for a suitable position forthe person back at the home base or retrain the person to do another job.

Fourth, the attraction of not having to be responsible for the career of a man-ager has caused some traditional MNCs to employ international itinerants ratherthan their own staff in particular situations. These international itinerants havebeen employed when either there are no individuals within the organization whohave the required skills or when those who have the skills are unwilling to move tothe job that needs to be filled. Examples of such skill shortages were experiencedby international banks that decided to aggressively market their products and ser-vices but found they did not have the marketing expertise needed, so they re-cruited experienced outside managers with the required marketing skills but withoutcorporate knowledge or experience in the region.

Fifth, countries and organizations that have replaced foreign managers withtheir own nationals have found that they risk being cut off from international sourcesof skill, knowledge, and development. To give an example from Saudi Arabia, thelocal banks that have foreign joint-venture partners have been able to bring into arapidly developing market, technology and techniques from other places in whichthey operate that could then be applied with little modification, while purely localbanks have to learn from scratch, mainly by copying the joint-venture banks. How-ever, some domestic banks have employed international itinerants and use theirexpertise to buy and apply the technology and techniques that would be mostuseful. Sometimes this even gives a competitive advantage to the employing orga-nization that can chose the products and service most suitable for them, not theones the head office of the joint venture thinks are best suited in overall corporateterms.

Sixth, the international itinerant brings expertise that would be time consumingand expensive to generate within the host organization. The managerial learningcurve should not be too long for those who have been international itinerants over-coming similar problems elsewhere. There will be a period of learning how to getthings done within the new organization, but as the international itinerant is fo-


cused on the short-term needs of getting a job done, he will not spend too muchtime on gaining wider organizational knowledge.

Seventh, unlike the open-ended contract of a more permanent employee, thecontract for the international itinerant can be for the time expected to carry out therequired tasks. Although the international itinerant could appear to be more ex-pensive than a seconded expatriate or a local manager, this solution is likely to becheaper than hiring a consultant, which might be the alternative.

Eighth, where the employer knows that difficult circumstances have to be dealtwith, it makes sense to have a foreigner take the action. The international itinerantcan be better able to carry out unpopular tasks than permanent managers, for ex-ample, in a downsizing or cost-control situation, where he has no long-term loy-alty to the local community. As an outsider, the international itinerant is likely tobe less disruptive to group harmony than an insider and may thus be able to carryout difficult tasks (Smith and Bond 1998). This supports the experience of thepresent researcher, who has regularly found an international itinerant, employedto come into a company, carry out a reorganization and then go.

Ninth, there is rarely support for the international itinerants and their spousesand families apart from that given informally on a personal basis by other localmanagers. The host-country subsidiaries are not required to provide a job for theexpatriate manager on repatriation, are not concerned too much with the adjust-ment of the employee’s spouse, and have little responsibility to the employee’sfamily. The spouses of international itinerants do not have dual careers unless theyhave skills and qualifications (such as teaching) that are in demand in a variety oflocations. Otherwise, they decide not to accompany the itinerants.

Tenth, the employer does not have to worry about equal opportunities or anti-discrimination legislation that would apply to a MNC but often not to a host-country subsidiary.

The next section delineates the disadvantages for the organization of assigninginternational itinerants to the foreign subsidiaries.

Disadvantages for employers

The two main disadvantages for the host-country subsidiaries in employing inter-national itinerants deal with the itinerants’ knowledge of the MNCs and the MNCs’knowledge of the itinerants.

First, international itinerants may lack knowledge that is essential in managingthe subsidiaries of the MNCs. This may include personal knowledge of headquar-ter officials and of the political coalitions that influence important decision-mak-ing processes; knowledge of the MNC’s organizational culture that must bedisseminated internationally in order to enhance the subsidiaries’ efficiency and tomaintain the international integration and image of the MNC; and knowledge ofthe MNC’s core competences, policies, and practices that are being used world-wide and are part of the MNC’s competitive advantages.


Second, a MNC may have limited familiarity with the candidate internationalitinerant’s skills and abilities. It seems safer to assign a manager who has beenwith the MNC for some time and whose performance seems to be predictable. Yet,the claimed high rate of failure of expatriate managers demonstrates that success-ful performance in a home country does not guarantee a similar performance in ahost country, where environmental conditions are different. Hence, the risk in-volved in the assignment of an expatriate manager, who has been successful atheadquarters but who might fail in the subsidiary, is similar to the risk involved inthe assignment of an international itinerant whose performance is less predictablethan that of the expatriate manager.

The next two sections look into the advantages and disadvantages of interna-tional assignments for the international itinerants.

Advantages for international itinerants

Some individuals relish the challenge of regular changes of employer and worklocation, as well as independence. The higher pay they receive in return for lessemployer commitment and fewer nonfinancial benefits, such as lower status andless say than that of the expatriate managers, attracts others.

It appears that the successful international itinerants have a high tolerance ofambiguity and show much openness to experience (Smith and Bond 1998). It couldbe that this openness enables them to make contacts across intercultural barriers andleads them to gain adaptive social skills. Effective global managers know what theydo not know, and they emphasize description by observing what is actually said anddone rather than interpreting and evaluating it (Adler 1997). They look at the actualsituation and do not make a comparison with a home or other situation and do notmake judgments in the context of that other situation. The international itinerantoperating in a local context seems to enjoy applying these skills in a way that wouldnot be possible to use in a more structured and familiar environment.

International managers play an important role in “thinking local” and then ap-ply their local insights on a global scale (Arnold 2004). Flexible, open-mindedmanagers translate such ideas into new circumstances with sensitivity and under-standing (Das 2000). The international itinerant can apply such acquired knowl-edge, translate it, and apply it with care in a variety of other “local” situations.

Disadvantages for international itinerants

There are some disadvantages for the international itinerants in taking interna-tional jobs.

First, the successful international itinerants may be overconfident in their abil-ity to handle a wide variety of situations in an effective (but not always efficient)way. They know that there will be serious obstacles to their success, but they areconfident that they will overcome the obstacles, because they have overcome similar


obstacles before. This characteristic may obstruct their view of reality, thereby,enhancing their chances of committing mistakes.

Second, international itinerants often seem to be too individualistic to becomesuccessful in permanent placements within an organizational structure. They wouldnot be a good fit in a traditional path or organizational succession plan (Bruce 1998).

Third, international itinerants do not value job security. They may become thecitizens of the world rather than citizens of any specific country or corporation.While this may fit their need to be cosmopolitan, it may hamper their family needsfor stability and identity with a national culture. At the same time, this argumentcould be generalized to include traditional expatriate managers who take interna-tional assignments for their MNCs.

Fourth, sometimes the international itinerants will be the only one of their na-tionality in an organization or at least one of very few. This type of manager haslittle power in the organization except that brought by expertise. There is no parentcompany head-office structure to support him and none of the power that comesfrom being able to influence the long-term career of others. “Here I have no rights.If I was at home in Hong Kong I would have rights in employment” (Chinesebanker in the Middle East).

Fifth, there are obstacles to non-Western managers becoming international itin-erants. In countries such as the People’s Republic of China, local managers weremore resentful of foreign managers of the same ethnic background than they wereof different races, such as Europeans or Japanese (Smith and Bond 1998; Harry1998). In the West, greater similarity leads to greater interpersonal attraction, butin a study conducted in Africa, black selectors were frequently found to choosewhite Westerners in preference to equally well-qualified candidates from Africa orAsia (Carr et al. 1996). The generalization of this phenomenon has been tested anddocumented by Banai and Reisel (1999).

Career management of expatriate managers and internationalitinerants

International itinerants may be a product of globalization, following work wher-ever it is found, selling the expertise that they have built up over their earliercareer, but operating in a multinational environment. They can be quite mercenarylooking for the best pay, conditions, and development opportunities they can get,because they have to manage their own careers.

International itinerants are different from (1) the expatriates who are employedfor most of their careers by one employer; (2) the expatriate who has decided tosettle in a particular country; and (3) the nationals who return to their home coun-tries after receiving education and gaining skills in other countries. The interna-tional itinerants follow career paths that differ from those followed by traditionalexpatriate managers who are organization focused (Altman 1999). Although ex-patriate managers’ professional career options come close to those taken by inter-


national itinerants, it applies within an organizational context, whereas the inter-national itinerants are self-focused and do not expect to fit into an organization’scareer path plans.

Current literature about boundaryless careers in general (Inkson 2004) is usedhere to extrapolate about seven dimensions along which international itinerants’careers might differ from the traditional expatriate managers’ careers: (1) self-managed careers as compared to corporate-managed careers; (2) loyalty to profes-sional development as compared to loyalty to the organization; (3) working fornumerous employers as compared to working for one or two of them; (4) transfer-able skills as compared to firm-specific skills; (5) on-the-job training as comparedto formal training programs; (6) success measured by psychologically meaningfulwork as compared to success that is measured by pay, promotion, and status; and(7) learning-related career milestones as compared to age-related ones. These dif-ferences are defined and illustrated below, and propositions are offered.

Self-managed careers

The international itinerants have self-managed careers, because they do not havethe continuous support of an employer. They are employed to carry out a task orseries of tasks, and when these have been completed, the employer is under noobligation to offer or seek further tasks for them to undertake. As a British bankeroperating in the Middle East put it: “I manage my own career. I keep in contactwith the market and have a good network with former colleagues and recruiters.My career is like a product that has to be kept in the market. I keep my eyes openfor opportunities.”

Traditional expatriates, like any other managers in domestic assignments, areconcerned with job security and late career savings. Yet, the international itinerantmay exchange personal security for family objectives, as stated by a Chinese bankerworking in the Middle East: “We chose to have my wife stay in Canada with ourdaughter so that she can have a good education and stability while I work here andsave for our retirement.”

Proposition 1: The more that international managers, rather than theirorganizations, are in charge of their careers, the more likely they are to beinternational itinerants.

Loyalty to professional development

For some international itinerants, the employment will be in another internationalsetting, but some seem to choose to move on a regular basis between home andhost locations. The age of children and employment opportunities for spouses aremajor factors in the decision on work location. Unlike the traditional expatriatemanager, the international itinerant has no expectation that the employer will sup-


port a dual-career family or provide long-term educational facilities. As an oil-in-dustry executive operating in the Middle East suggested: “I make my own arrange-ments to have my partner with me. It is illegal, in this country, for an unmarriedcouple to live together but I have found ways to avoid the government restrictions.”

The loyalty expected by the employer and employee is short term in its dura-tion, as are the rights and obligations to and from each part. So long as it suits both,the employment will continue. When one party thinks the costs and benefits nolonger balance, then the international itinerant will depart to seek further employ-ment elsewhere.

International itinerants are more loyal to their career’s progression and de-velopment than to their organizations. Their first priority is personal. Foreignexpatriates show less attachment than their counterparts to their organizations(Ali, Azim, and Krishnan 1995; Ali, Taqi, and Krishnan 1997; Banai and Reisel1993), and international itinerants present even less loyalty to their organiza-tions than the traditional expatriates. In the words of a human resources ex-ecutive working in the Middle East: “I show absolute commitment whileworking for an employer. I work harder and more effectively than the em-ployer would reasonably expect. But after I have left my loyalty is to the newemployer.”

Proposition 2: The higher the international managers’ loyalty to theirprofession, rather than to their organizations, the more likely they are to beinternational itinerants.

Employment in multiple firms

Driven by their loyalty to their own careers, international itinerants keep movingfrom one employer to another, seeking the best return on their input. This return isnot necessarily in terms of pays and benefits but rather a search for the best careermove that will allow for continuous learning and performing psychologicallymeaningful work. In the words of a pilot who lives in Southeast Asia: “I could stayhere flying 757s but I know that the future lies with the more modern aircraft suchas the 777 so I will give up my job here and move to an airline with a newer fleet,even if I have to go back to being a First Officer for a while.”

Proposition 3: The more organizations independent of each other theinternational managers work for, the more likely are these managers to beinternational itinerants.

Transferable skills

International itinerants take charge of their own careers and use their skills as acommodity to sell in a way that allows them to achieve their personal goals, as


reflected in the case of a British 27-year-old IT expert who had been commutingbetween London, Dublin, and New York for a couple of years: “It wears you downafter a while, so I have accepted an offer from another firm which will mean that Iget to use the skills I have acquired and sleep in my own bed every night” (Jones2002). Another itinerant, a British, male legal executive, who works in East Asiacommented that: “I used to worry about security of employment but after fiveyears or more as a roving expatriate I only worry that my skills will become out-dated or not transferable.”

Proposition 4: The more likely international managers are to acquiretransferable skills, the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Learning-related milestones

The series of jobs of international itinerants are selected for their potential to pro-vide the itinerant with more knowledge. Expatriate managers mostly assess theircareer’s progress by their level of income. Hence, as compared with the traditionalexpatriate managers who may judge their career’s progress by comparing theirincome and rank with that of other expatriates of similar age, the internationalitinerants judge their career’s progress by the level of professional learning theyhave achieved. As one oil-sector manager working in the Middle East has phrasedit: “I do not find the insecurity of employment nor the occasional political insecu-rity too much of a problem. Obviously a measure of financial security comes fromthe compensation and benefits I get from the job I undertake, but the package isnever the primary motive when taking the job. Maybe I am like a ‘job shopper’ inmaking sure that the job I take is going to give me skills and expertise I can use toget the next job.”

Proposition 5: The more likely international managers are to measure theircareer’s progress by assessing their level of learning, rather than bycomparing their rank with that of their age group, the more likely they are tobe international itinerants.

On-the-job training

Training and personal development seem to be an obsession with many interna-tional itinerants. They know that when their skills are outdated, they will have totrade down to less interesting or not-as-well-paid positions. Because they knowhow expensive (in time as well as money) it would be to be enrolled in trainingcourses, they seek ways of developing expertise through work. Their employers,as mentioned elsewhere, are reluctant to pay for formal training, so it is gainingexperience and learning from job appointments that drive most itinerants whoneed to keep improving their worth to potential employers. As expressed by a


bank executive in the Middle East: “I always try to think about the job after thenext one I take so I have to make sure I am developing skills or expertise in eachjob to make sure I can get another job.”

Proposition 6: The more international managers are trained on the job,rather than in formal training programs, the more likely they are to beinternational itinerants.

Psychological meaningful work as measure of success

The preference of managers and scholars is to believe that, like strategy, careerscan be planned within a corporate frame. Yet, in places such as Australia and NewZealand, corporate expatriate assignment is unusual, and the norm is individualoverseas experience. People who have initiated their own international careerprogress have reported major personal growth and career development throughtravel, in competencies such as versatility, flexibility, and self-confidence, in theacquisition of new skills, and in the incubation of ideas for new ventures (Inksonet al. 1997). Though this attitude characterizes only a small portion of the world’spopulation, it may be common among international itinerants.

Proposition 7: The more international managers measure their success bypsychologically meaningful work, rather than by pay, promotion, and status,the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Discussion

Traditional and current theories and models of career management have all as-sumed that there is a need on the part of the employee to adjust to the organiza-tion in order to maintain a long-term relationship with the organization. In return,the organization provides job security to the employee. Current writers haverealized that boundaryless careers have become predominant (Inkson 2004), andmodels have been proposed to describe this type of career management (Sullivan1999). Rather than looking into whether a manager has developed loyalty to theorganization, and performed in accordance with the organization’s objectives,the boundaryless careers models consider the motives of the managers in takingthe assignments in the first place, first, and the managers’ performance and loy-alty, later. Yet, these models have not been extended from domestic employmentto the management of the international workforce. Therefore, our understandingof similarities and differences among different types of international managers,and our ability to predict their career paths, is limited.

In this study, we have identified and described a new breed of internationalmanagers, the international itinerants. We have identified the differences betweenthem and the traditional expatriate managers, and we describe the advantages and


disadvantages involved in their employment for the MNCs and for themselves.This process has allowed us to formulate propositions about the career manage-ment of the international itinerants that, if tested and validated, have the potentialto offer a general and inclusive model of global career management. In addition tothe validation of the model, further studies of global career management may helpidentify and classify groups of managers and professionals who are likely to fol-low boundaryless careers.

First, issues should be explored to decide on the differences between a domes-tic itinerant and an international one. For example, how should European manag-ers who move within the European Union (such as a French manager going toGermany, Hungary, and Poland) in pursuit of careers, be classified? After all, thesemanagers cross no employment-market boundaries, yet they cross cultural ones.Mayrhofer et al. (2004) have focused in their research on this question, and theyhave come up with the conclusion that a new classification of career managementshould be applied, where the focus is on the nature of the managers’ organizationalcommitment. This focus, however, looks at the end result of the assignment andcould not be assessed before the assignment takes place. Therefore, this does nothelp organizations in their selection processes.

Second, nonmanagerial groups such as consultants, journalists, performers andartists, athletes, and volunteers, could be studied and compared to find out theircareer patterns. Groups of different national and ethnic backgrounds as well asgroups from various economic systems and standards, moving from developed todeveloping countries or vice versa, could add information and, consequently, ex-planation of the phenomenon of global boundaryless careers. Lessons from thesegroups could be applied to employees in domestic and international organizations.

Third, managers who are pursuing international boundaryless careers may bethe leaders in a trend that will be followed by many if not most employees indomestic organizations in the future (Stahl et al. 2002; Weick 1996). Such domes-tic managers will have to look after their own interests rather than expect theiremployers to be overly concerned with their well being (Handy 1994). Hence,studying the international aspects of this trend can add valuable information to theunderstanding of likely domestic career patterns. Issues such as holding responsi-bility for their careers, maintaining loyalty to their development, serving multiplefirms, acquiring transferable skills, measuring success by psychologically mean-ingful work, gaining new skills on the job and in self-initiated courses, and mea-suring career success in learning-related milestones, characterize internationalitinerants and may soon characterize many domestic managers and professionals.

Fourth, special attention should be paid to the study of the international itiner-ants’ characteristics, motivations, and needs. They include characteristics that havenot been studied here or elsewhere, such as entrepreneurial spirit and activities;freedom to control their own destiny; need for achievement; lack of need for secu-rity in the traditional organization; quick and painless adjustment to new settings,organizations, and people; unique sets of skills that they are able to refresh con-


stantly; and confidence in their ability to reach their goals. These and other charac-teristics of the boundaryless international itinerants should be studied in order toassist organizations in identifying those people and to allow potential internationalitinerants to explore their advantages and disadvantages.

Fifth, careers have been studied from the organizations’ viewpoints. This study,among others, investigates patterns of career management as viewed by individualmanagers. An alternative model should be offered to replace the “constructivist”and “objectivist” models. There is a need to develop a model that would integratethe organizational and the individual models, whether constructivist or objectivist,to offer a comprehensive explanation of career management. This type of a modelwould depict current relations between independent employees and organizationsthat periodically contract with each other just for enough time necessary to achievetheir objectives. Job market measures could be used as moderating variables thatwould explain the length of time those interactions last.

Implications

International and domestic organizations must change their concepts of careermanagement. They should realize that many careers are now mobile, are improvi-sational, and are learning based (Inkson 2004). While changing their strategies ofemployment of international managers and expatriate managers, in general, theyhave to pay special attention and adopt new strategies to the employment of inter-national itinerants. Because international itinerants need very little attention fromheadquarters, it would require little efforts to manage them professionally. Yet,because they share some common characteristics, it is optional for large MNCsthat employ many international itinerants to establish a special unit, within theinternational human resource management department, that would focus on themanagement of the international itinerants.

First, international positions should be classified into those that require expatri-ate managers and those that require international itinerants. The decision shouldbe made based on the MNC’s objectives and the function of the position. Forexample, where knowledge of headquarters is required, an expatriate should beassigned.

Second, MNCs should identify potential international itinerants and employthem in a flexible way to achieve maximum individual performance with mini-mum commitment on the part of the MNC and with potential savings on long-termemployment costs.

Third, being aware of the phenomenon and its implications, MNCs should de-velop and promote new HR mechanisms to manage this new breed of managers.Adjustments should be made in recruitment, selection, training, and rewardingpolicies and practices, so that international itinerant would be managed effectively.For example, international publications should be used as outlets for job postingsin the recruitment process. This practice may attract international itinerants who


may display an interest in the global jobs market rather than in a country-specificmarket. Another example could be applied in the selection process, where organi-zational loyalty should not be considered as a selection criterion. We have alreadylearned that international itinerants do not exhibit much organizational loyalty, butthey may be very efficient employees. When it comes to the training process,assuming that they take care of their own learning and knowledge acquiring, inter-national itinerants should benefit from less training than traditional expatriates.MNCs that quickly adapt to the new labor force environment will become moreeffective and more efficient.

Fourth, personnel in the human resource department should be trained to man-age international itinerants. The international itinerants’ motivation, special needs,and limited time contracts could be some of the topics discussed in such a trainingprogram. It is understood that the international itinerants possess many desirablequalities not possessed by expatriate managers, but they may need some trainingto help them better integrate into the host organization.

Last, performance evaluations and compensation issues would normally bemanaged by the subsidiary, because the latter employs the managers and paystheir salaries and benefits, and because it possesses better knowledge of thelocal salaries’ scales than headquarters. MNCs that will learn how to recruit,select, and reward international itinerants may benefit from a first-class pro-fessional service while cutting on their long-term international assignmentsexpenses.

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