International Executives, Identity Strategies and Mobility in France and China

Abstract

The strategies of multinational firms increasingly rely in Asia Pacific Region on processes of socialising their employees, who are seeking to develop and reinforce a “global” company culture, without endangering the cultures of local subsidiaries. Specialists have coined the term “cross-cultural management”. A role of “company ambassador” is allocated to a new generation of international executives in Asia whose mission will be to play an effective role as interface between head office its the subsidiaries – and between the subsidiaries themselves – once they have been suitably “impregnated” with the company culture and the particular features of different markets.

The repeated experience of international mobility that executives live through means that the individual may well be living in conflict with previous identities. It is true to say that nobody stays long in an internationally mobile situation without running the risk of there being strong divergence between the domestic and residential worlds, the life of the community and the world of the company. This article has been written as a result of in-depth research into the way executives of a large French oil company built up their identities and as a result of a study examines intercultural learning based on French expatriates' experience in China. We consider how French expatriates experience China and what imaginary underlies their perception. Analysis of daily socialization and interaction processes shows intercultural competence develops along distinct immersion stages: immersion–adjustment, immersion–comprehension, and immersion–integration. Individually, adjustment and comprehension support intercultural practice. The ultimate immersion stage leads to enlightened pragmatism stemming from “nomadic intelligence”. Where a researcher in the social sciences or a business man might have expected to have found an homogenous international elite, international executives building an “international system”, the heterogeneous nature of the identity strategies of international executives give the lie to the myth of the large company as a space for the irreversible assimilation of its members. At an individual level, being an international executive is a unique way of living the experience abroad, or rather, several different ways of experiencing identity strategies linked to the manipulation of one's ethnicity in a context of significant geographical and functional mobility.

Keywords:

• International transfers
• ethnicity
• identity strategies
• intercultural confrontation
• professional socialization
• immersion stages
• cross-cultural experience
• cultural learning
• nomadic intelligence

Notes

¹ Qualitative data was collected (14 interviews adding up to 800 pages once translated), together with 33 semi-structured interviews, as well as interviews of journalists and photographers working in Asia. This article is based on a thesis entitled, ‘Education through travel: imaginaries and intercultural experience of westerners in Asia’, as well as on research done in 1997–2000 regarding French expatriates’ experience of China and more recent studies (another ongoing research project from 2001–2003).

² Carried out using full-time salaried workers, the results described in this study are based on 120 semi-directed interviews undertaken with a population of executives and managers working for Alpha. 86 of these interviews were conducted with ‘international’ executives – by ‘international’ we mean non-French executives who, while working for Alpha, are, or have been, away from their original subsidiary and are internationally mobile, whether this mobility takes place in France (the case for 70 of the interviewees) or within another subsidiary in the organization studied (for the remaining 16). The average length of service of those on long-term contracts was 11.3 years; the average number of trips abroad (of over three months) by each executive was 2.3 and the average length of the stay abroad was 2.6 years. Of the 86 international executives questioned, 5 per cent had less than 5 years’ seniority, 30 per cent between 5 and 15 years’ seniority, 35 per cent between 15 and 20 years’ seniority and 30 per cent had been with the company for more than 20 years (these were often the directors of a subsidiary or service division). Of these 86 interviews, it should be noted that only two women were questioned. The French executives who also experienced international mobility (intra-organizational) are, in this article, referred to as expatriates.

³ A. C. Wagner, in another research context, reports the case of M. Schneider who underlines the symbolic profits of the capital brought in by his family: ‘they couldn't place me’. Because he thought he had escaped the status of being a foreigner without being purebred French, he was able to define himself as a prototype of Franco-German friendship, a social image that was particularly useful in his area of activity (Wagner, 1998: 174).

⁴ N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan (1975) have illustrated the emergence of what they call a ‘new ethnicity’, a process of ethnic identification among the upper and middle classes of the wealthy suburbs of American cities (the Irish and St Patrick, the Italians and the annual Mulberry Street parade). The subjective identity invoked on demand during these temporary events has no influence over the rest of their social lives. M. Waters (1990) explains that the ‘new ethnicity’ persists as it allows the individual to satisfy two contradictory desires inherent in the American psyche: the desire to belong to a community and the desire for individuality. The new ethnicity is attractive to the middle classes because it implies a choice. It gives the impression of having a rich cultural background without the costs attached to ethnic loyalty (commitment to a group with social obligations) being high.