A Critical Examination of the “Cosmopolitan Manager”

Julie Gedro, MBA, PHR, EdD

Institution:

Empire State College / State University of New York

Title:

Associate Professor of Business, Management & Economics

Mailing Address:

6333 State Route 298

East Syracuse, New York 13057 USA

Email Address:

Stream: Critical, theoretical and methodological issues in HRD

Submission Type: Fully Refereed Paper

A Critical Examination of the “Cosmopolitan Manager”

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the meaning of the term“cosmopolitan manager.” The paper will argue that the meaning and the practices of selection and development of “cosmopolitan managers” reinforce existing privilege within corporate hierarchies through reifying classist performances of access and advancement. The proposal will, therefore, present a series of suggestions for future scholarship regarding “cosmopolitan” management development, so that management development practices can be transformed into mechanisms for the creation of greater intra-organizational equity, as well as greater organizational social responsibility. This proposal is informed by the author’s own experience as an adult educator, instructional designer, and business professor, combined with a review of the extant HRD literature.

Keywords: Cosmopolitan, management development, expatriate assignments

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to propose that the construct of the “cosmopolitan manager” reinforces existing privilege within corporate hierarchies through reifying classist performances of access and advancement. International experience is irrefutably important for building a successful corporate career today (Dickmann & Doherty, 2008; Flynn, 2008; Selmer & Leung, 2003) and yet the process of selection for international assignments remains critically examined. Women, for example, face an “expatriate glass ceiling” (Insch, McIntyre, & Napier), which is created by the tension between the need for international experience as necessary for upward mobility and the gender bias against women as candidates for such selection. The paper takes a critical stance about international assignments, and the concept of the “cosmopolitan manager,” because it teases out the way that these assignments privilege dominant groups and marginalize others. Gender is but one of these dimensions of marginalization. The paper will also consider race, class, and sexual orientation as limiting factors for selection for international assignments.

As this paper will demonstrate through a review of the HRD literature and related literature, there is a substantial amount of study around international assignments as developmental opportunities. However, there is a void in the literature around who has access to these types of assignments. In stark relief to the abundance of literature on expatriate, or international, assignments as “stepping stones” to senior leadership ranks, there is no corresponding body of knowledge that problematizes the selection mechanisms for international assignment. The dearth of inquiry around cosmopolitanism as it related to career development reinforces privilege, and creates intra-organizational classism.

This proposal is informed by my own experience as an adult educator, instructional designer, and business professor, combined with a review of the management literature. While the last two decades of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century, have seen a proliferation of international business, there has been a concomitant increase in the importance of international assignments as developmental opportunities for those aspiring to senior management (Gedro, 2010). The current dearth of investigation about the selection procedures for international assignments within the scholarly literature in management, psychology, adult education, human resource development, and related fields, reinforces the classism of corporate America. It creates a veneer of impenetrable distance between those who have access to growth and advancement, and those whose options are quite limited.

Theoretical Foundations

The idea of the “cosmopolitan” is presented throughout anthropology, business, political science, cultural studies, and consumer studies (Hannerz, 1990; Kanter, 1995; Vance & Paik, 2011; Gustafson, 2009; Goldberg, Baker, & Rubenstein, 1965; Mitchell, 2003; Godrej, 2011). Cosmopolitans are “individuals with broad experience in many countries” (Haas, 2006, p. 367). Because of the disparate epistemological roots of the construct of a “cosmopolitan manager,” this literature review culls together that disparity and presents a set of research questions designated to both offer some insight as well as to grapple with the idea that cosmopolitanism in the corporate context represents a very narrow funnel through which majoritarian high potentials pass on their way to the top ranks of corporate America.

Research Questions and Methodology

The questions this paper will address are:

  1. What is a “cosmopolitan manager?”
  2. How does one become a “cosmopolitan manager?
  3. Who gets to become a “cosmopolitan manager?
  4. To what extent do international assignments help those engaged in those assignments become sensitized to issues of equity, ethics, and human rights within a multinational corporation?

Drawing upon a multi-disciplinary framework, the paper presents a discussion and exploration of existing literature on international assignments and it will then extend that knowledge into a proposition for international assignments as ways of increasing access to opportunities for all stakeholders in a corporation, and not just a select, elite few. As I was conducting research and preparing to develop and then teach an undergraduate course on International Human Resource Management, I was struck by the phrase “cosmopolitan manager” that the authors of my chosen textbook used which said: “Managers with a cosmopolitan mind-set understand intuitive that different cultural norms have value and meaning to those who practice them” (Vance & Paik, 2011, pp. 103-104). I conducted a literature review using the keywords “cosmopolitan manager” in EBSCOHost, SAGE, and ProQuest, the results garnered an array of articles in business, sociology, political science, anthropology and consumer behavior. Because of the specialized purpose of this article which is to explore the meaning of the term “cosmopolitan manager” and the questions related to it (listed above), I focused on research that informed the questions.

Research Question 1: What is a “cosmopolitan manager?”

The word “cosmopolitan” means sophisticated as to be at home in all parts of the world or conversant with many spheres of interest (American Heritage Dictionary, 2012). Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 30 are multinational corporations (Frenkel, 2006, in Altman & Shortland, 2008). The concept of “the cosmopolitan manager” is emergingas a contemporary, necessary, and critical consideration for research and practice of International Human Resource Development.

As global competition intensifies, a global managerial mindest has emerged as a necessity for competitive advantage (Levy, Beechler, Tayor, & Boyacigiller, 2007). International assignments are significant not only in providing an expansion for the individual’s career capacity, they are significant in building organizational capacity. Therefore, on a macro level, the selection and management of international assignments holds implications for the overall effectiveness of an organization. Failure rates of international assignments are high, and they are costly (Branine, 2011). The corporation, in other words, has a vested interest in assuring that it maximizes its return on investment through resource spent on expatriation, and that is minimizes costs associated with failure. The benefit of expatriate assignments for those selection to engage in them includes not only advancement opportunities, but also, the ability to acquire social and cultural capital that facilitates their movement within their current organization as well as to be able to consider and explore other opportunities outside of their organization. Certainly, the second benefit that I identify is of value for the employee and not the organization.

A second type of definition of cosmopolitan, with respect to career, refers to one’s career orientation andcareer focus. Delbecq and Elfner (1970) presented a continuum of local versus cosmopolitan career orientations, suggesting that three criteria measure one’s occupational orientation. First, there is loyalty to one’s own company or employer. Second, there is a commitment to a set of skills. Third, there is a reference group orientation. Cosmopolitans, Delbecq and Elfner suggested, are oriented outside their organization, and that locals are loyal to their organization. There is research around the cosmopolitan/local dimension within Science (Canan & Ladwick, 1989; Glaser, 2011; Rotondi, 1977), Education (Baker & Zey-Ferrell, 1984; Fuller, Hester, Barnett, Frey, & Relyea, 2006), Religion (Roof, 1972), and general professional values and behavior (Goldberg, 1976). Furthermore, Grimes and Berger (1970) offer that “those oriented to the world outside the local community were classified as cosmopolitans; those oriented toward the local community as locals” (p. 407). Although this definition does not directly pertain to the definition of “cosmopolitan” for purposes of this paper, it does offer an additional layer of insight about the object of focus for purposes of career, and career advancement. If one were to combine, for example, both sets of definitions, it could be argued that those who have become developed through their expatriate assignments and have a sophisticated worldview as a results of those developmental experiences have the luxury of being the second type of cosmopolitan; that is, they have the luxury of considering other organizations as potential employers should they decide that to change employers suits their own interests. In a sense, expatriate assignments result in two types of privilege: 1) Development, whether or not one remains with the current employer; and 2) Freedom and mobility, should one decide to change jobs.

Cosmopolitans are individuals with broad experience in many countries whereas locals are individuals with extensive experience in the project country (Hass, 2006). Levy, Beechler, Taylor, and Boyacigiller (2007) explain that the global mindset represents a “highly complex individual-level cognitive structure characterized by openness, differentiated articulation of cultural and strategic dynamics on both local and global scales, and integration across these multiple domains” (p. 248). Cosmopolitianism represents a “process by which everyone accepts the same economic and cultural imperatives” (Counhihan, 2009, p. 32) and a cosmopolitan manager is one who is developed through cross cultural training, expatriate assignments, and other work-related travel (Counhihan; Gustafson, 2009). Cosmopolitanism represents a socio-cultural condition, an attitude and disposition, and a type of competency (Vertovec & Cohen, 2002, in Gustafson, 2009). Success in the global marketplace rests on the ability of managers and leaders to posses abstract skills such as information utilization, idea generation, creative adaptation to change, a global perspective, and cultural versatility (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999).

Research Question 2: How does one become a “cosmopolitan manager?

Cosmopolitanism “can be cultivated through training and experience, particularly for expatriate professionals who, in many cases, are in the business of managing cultural meanings” (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999, p 216). A search using JSTOR, ProQuest, and ABI/Inform using the keywords “expatriate selection” garnered few results. There is literature on expatriate assignments as management development endeavors. Yeaton and Hall (2008 offered that selection of candidates for expatriate assignments should be “careful,” and that candidates should have good interpersonal skills, a high tolerance for ambiguity, patience, perseverance, technical skills, nonjudgmental behavior, and motivation. However, there is little explicit scholarship that explores the process by which one becomes a “cosmopolitan.” Cosmopolitanism has been linked to travel, and in general, one is thought to become cosmopolitan through travelling (Hannerz, 2010). Therefore, with respect to becoming a cosmopolitan manager, travel and work experiences for the purpose of conducting and fulfilling management and leadership roles and responsibilities is the mechanism. By extension, then, expatriate work assignments provide the opportunity for one to become a cosmopolitan manager.

Although the focus of this paper is Human Resource Development, the inclusion of social class impinges prospectively on the discussion of the origins or the venues of cosmopolitanism. It would be naïve to think that employers and employer sponsored training and management development opportunities represent the only mechanism through which employees, and in particular, upwardly mobile employees, become worldly or cosmopolitan. Social class presents a moderating variable in this discussion, therefore. McNamee and Miller (2009) explain how social class impacts the rearing of children, and how children from different social classes are afforded disparate levels of privilege. Working class habitus, for example, “seems to produce less social and cultural capital” (p. 92). For Bordieu, cultural capital is cultural property, or more specifically, the possession of knowledge and artifacts associated with groups. The source of cultural capital is located in, and transmitted through, what Bordieu calls habitus, the whole panoply of practices, dispositions, and tastes that organize an individual’s participation within the culture of the group. (p. 89).

Additionally, there are advantages that accrue to upper class children in the form of educational opportunities, mentoring, role models, and opportunities to acquire cultural knowledge that privilege them even before they enter systems of higher education. However speculative a proposition, it is possible to imagine that this early privileging establishes a longitudinal pattern of high expectations based upon accumulated capital (material, social, and cultural) over the life span that impacts one’s access to high potential development opportunities in the workplace.

In general, the question of process, or acquisition, of cosmopolitanism presents a freestanding opportunity for further research.

Research Question 3: Who gets to become a “cosmopolitan manager?

Given the inherent exclusivity and value-laden implication of the term “cosmopolitan,” I also drew upon research related to women and international assignments. The reason for this is that in the research on cosmopolitan managers, there are authors who problematize the idea of the cosmopolitan as representing industrial, developed, capitalist interests (Gustafson, 2009; Haas, 2006,Thompson & Tambyah, 1999). However, there is a dearth of inquiry into the demographics of the “cosmopolitan manager.” In other words, there is little to no exploration of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation within the literature on cosmopolitanism. This renders the issue of identity incompletely explored. In the absence of such inquiry, the proximal evidence that cosmopolitans are over-represented by majoritarian members of the corporation—that is, heterosexual, able bodied, white males who have been selected for developmental opportunities that facilitate their identity as cosmopolitans—is that this population tends to be over-represented in senior leadership positions in corporations in the United States. Cosmopolitanism is a value laden, resource intensive, and competitive proposition:

Through taken-for-granted meanings, beliefs, normative values, and implicit cultural connotations, ideologies become naturalized as part of a cultural way of life and situate individuals’ self-directed actions within a socio-cultural matrix of power relations, such as dominant/subordinate, central/marginal, and included/excluded (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999, p. 215).

In the United States, for example, although women represent 46.7 percent of the labor force, and they represent 51.5% of managers and professionals, they only represent 3.4% of Fortune 500 Chief Executive Officers (Catalyst, 2012). Women of color represent 6.1% of the labor force, and they held 3% of board seats in the Fortune 500 (Catalyst). The proportion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the labor force is difficult to determine because of the data collection challenges inherent in such a determination (Catalyst). Gedro, Cervero and Johnson-Bailey (2004) conducted research about lesbians in corporate America, and Gedro (2010 has written about the challenges of lesbians and expatriate assignments. International assignments are a necessary part of becoming a cosmopolitan manager.

The absence of scholarship on the issue of international assignments and majority/minority selection for international assignments combined with the disproportionately low representation of women, women of color, and LGBT people in senior leadership positions in corporate America suggests two things. One, at a minimum, there is a need for research and scholarship around the issue of expatriate selection. Gedro (2010) began the discussion with her work on lesbians and expatriates. However, there is a broader need for research around women of color, people of color, and sexual minorities and expatriate assignments. Two, given the disproportion, there is an implication for HRD practitioners that they question the ways that employees are categorized as high potentials and selected for international assignments. Cosmopolitanism requires firsthand experiences in other countries, and those experiences cost resources in the way of time and money.

Research Question 4: To what extent do international assignments help those engaged in those assignments become sensitized to issues of equity, ethics, and human rights within a multinational corporation?

Although perhaps the most hopeful of the research questions, the literature is silent on the question that asks to what extent do international assignments result in greater senses of ethics, equity and human rights. Certainly, when corporations send employees to other parts of the world in order to run parts of their businesses, or to develop new businesses or new business partnerships, the potential is there for all parties included in these endeavors to benefit. However, there is a dearth of research to date that explores the impact of expatriate assignments and the cosmopolitan managers who result from those expatriate assignments, upon individuals, corporations, systems and even societies. This question presents another freestanding opportunity for further scholarship and research.

Limitations

This theory development paper is limited to the United States. The limitation is intentional for two reasons. The first reason for the limitation is due to the length and the scope of the paper. An exploration of cosmopolitans using multiple host country lenses (in other words, thinking about cosmopolitan from the vantage point of corporations that are headquartered in countries other than the United States) would result in a paper of much greater length and complexity. It could perhaps result in a paper that is unwieldy. The second reason is that I have experience as a practitioner and scholar of Human Resource Development focused mostly on corporations in the United States, so the matter is also based upon intellectual and experiential integrity.

Conclusion

A cosmopolitan manager is one who has, through experience, exposure and training, acquired a significant level of fluency with travel, leisure, customs, business practices, and languages of other countries besides one’s own. A cosmopolitan manager has a worldview that transcends parochial interest and limitations.