Abstract
While the demand for international professionals willing and able to work in locations where they are needed around the world is high and increasing, the identification of employees with adequate competencies, who are interested in relocating abroad and able to successfully complete an international assignment, is a challenge of strategic importance for international firms. In this article, we discuss the challenges to talent management presented by global careerists, i.e. very experienced international managers with long-term global careers involving various international tasks. We reflect on and cross-analyse observations from a set of studies carried out with such Finnish business professionals. We analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) can attract, motivate and gain the commitment of global careerists who offer companies the most experienced human resources available in terms of implementing their internationalisation strategies.
More in-depth reports on the experiences of Finnish global careerists can be found in “Further Reading”
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Further Reading
Mäkelä, L., Saarenpää, K., Suutari, V., & Wurtz, O. (2012). How to cope with work-family conflicts in an international career context? In B. Molinelli & V. Grimaldo (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of co**: New research (pp. 151–168). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Publishers.
Mäkelä, K., & Suutari, V. (2009). Global careers: A social capital paradox. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(5), 992–1008.
Mäkelä, L., & Suutari, V. (2011). Co** with work-family conflicts in the global career context. Thunderbird International Business Review, 53(3), 365–375.
Suutari, V. (2003). Global managers: Career orientation, career tracks, life-style implications, and career commitment. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18(3), 185–207.
Suutari, V., & Mäkelä, K. (2007). The career capital of managers with global careers. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22, 628–648.
Suutari, V., & Taka, M. (2004). Career anchors of managers with global careers. Journal of Management Development, 23(9), 833–847.
Suutari, V., Tornikoski, C., & Mäkelä, L. (2012). Career decision making of global careerists. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(16), 3455–3478.
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Suutari, V., Wurtz, O., Tornikoski, C. (2014). How to Attract and Retain Global Careerists: Evidence from Finland. In: Al Ariss, A. (eds) Global Talent Management. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05125-3_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05125-3_16
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