Abstract
AbstractDrawing on human capital theory, our study examines the relationship between international work experience and individuals' career success in terms of promotions and subjective financial success. We propose that these relationships are mediated by external employability and hypothesise a moderating role of national‐level economic freedom. Using data from 19,421 respondents, residing in 30 countries and working in different occupational groups (managers, professionals, clerical and blue‐collar workers), our results suggest that international work experience is positively related to promotions and subjective financial success across our study's different national contexts. These positive relationships were mediated by individuals' perceived external employability. Some support for the moderation of the relationship between international work experience and employability through economic freedom was only found when we differentiate between different types of international work experience. The findings enhance our understanding of the association between international work experience and career success from a human capital perspective.
Highlights
The global leadership literature has maintained that the best way to develop global leaders is through international experiences (Collings & Isichei, 2018)
Given that international work experience (IWE) might have a differential relationship with employability across different levels of economic freedom (Hypothesis 3), we anticipate that the same will be true regarding its association with indicators of career success, that is: Hypothesis 4 Economic freedom decreases the positive indirect relationship of IWE with (a) promotions and (b) subjective financial success through perceived external employability
We can establish that IWE positively relates to employability (Model 3b, Table 3) and that employability positively relates to subjective financial success (Model 3a, Table 3)
Summary
The global leadership literature has maintained that the best way to develop global leaders is through international experiences (Collings & Isichei, 2018). Several studies have shown that employees with IWE develop important knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics abroad (Andresen, 2021; Kraimer et al, 2016; Shaffer et al, 2012) enabling them to advance their careers (Suutari et al, 2018) This career advancement can be explained by the argument in HCT that IWE represents an investment by which individuals develop their human capital (Ramaswami et al, 2016), generating tangible returns, including higher earnings and promotional chances (Berntson et al, 2006; Suutari et al, 2018), as well as psychic returns such as career satisfaction (Andresen & Biemann, 2013). We examine a country's economic freedom as an important contextual, macro-level influence on human capital investments that seems important to IWE and its relationship with career success Such economic freedom is broadly said to exist when individuals are free to use, give or exchange their knowledge or skills for economic benefit (Miller et al, 2015). Given that IWE might have a differential relationship with employability across different levels of economic freedom (Hypothesis 3), we anticipate that the same will be true regarding its association with indicators of career success, that is: Hypothesis 4 Economic freedom decreases the positive indirect relationship of IWE with (a) promotions and (b) subjective financial success through perceived external employability
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