International Mobility in the Age of Managerialism: to go or not to go?

Abstract

In this paper, we look at the drivers and the consequences of international mobility as a mechanism that can be used to grow career capital of business school academics. We explore different patterns of mobility and highlight their link to research performance outcomes, which are central to career capital in the managerialist academic culture. We use a sample of 360 tenured faculty members from 20 European business schools in 10 countries. These schools were randomly selected from the 50 most research intensive schools based on publication in the top 150 ISI listed business and management journals over 2007-2012. Our findings show that international mobility has positive impact on career capital, and is largely driven by academics’ ability to engage in radical upward mobility. This ability, in its turn, is deeply rooted in gender, which reveals social closure that managerialist approach has not managed to alleviate. The findings of this study have implications for academic researchers who consider international mobility and for PhD supervisors, whose duty is to prepare their students for successful careers in managerialist academia.