It’s been suggested that international experience is a must-have on the modern CEO’s resume, because of globalization. According to a new study (Too Much of a Good Thing: Does International Experience Variety Accelerate or Delay Executives’ Career Advancement?), getting more and more foreign know-how boosts executives’ careers only up to a point.
Executives who accumulate international experience are no more likely than others to advance their career at multinational companies. Spending too much time working abroad may actually delay, rather than accelerate, one’s career advancement. Foreign-based top managers are gaining international experience, but it comes at a price: they have less face-to-face networking opportunities at headquarters, according to strategy-business.com.
One hundred and sixty-three CEOs of some of the largest companies were surveyed. The authors measured the total years between each CEO’s first professional job and their appointment to the top position. Foreign assignments were also measured: both the number of years the CEOs had spent working abroad and the number of countries they had been stationed in were taken into account. The authors took the size of firm, its top management team, the CEOs’ level of education, tenure, and nationality into consideration.
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