Corporate global nomadism: The role of the transnational professional as consumer of popular management discourses

Abstract

An increasing body of research has paid particular attention to the role of different organizational actors in the consumption of popular management ideas, including their local diffusion, adaptation and enactment. However, with a few exceptions, these studies mostly focus on the organizational setting, thus neglecting the consumption of these kinds of discourses in other environments. Drawing on narrative analysis, this study follows this line of research by examining the ways in which a category of transnational professionals perceive and represent the discourse of corporate ‘global nomadism’ as part of their everyday life. This article contributes to management education by providing a critical approach to the ambiguous experiences involved in the ‘nomadic’ lifestyle that generally conflict with the idealized and glamourous views of corporate global mobility. In this way, a more rounded, critical and ultimately ethical type of management education for transnational mobility can be produced than currently is the case.