CIPD - International management development: an overview

Subjects

Revised May 2008

This factsheet gives introductory guidance. It:

looks at the factors which affect an organisation’s IMD strategy
considers the role of IMD in a talent management and succession planning context
reviews various types of developmental opportunities.

Organisations working internationally need to develop managers to be effective in their roles, taking into account the added complexities an international role involves. Issues to consider are:

the organisation’s business needs for developing international managers
the individual’s desire to develop skills and competences necessary to perform their role effectively and which lead to career opportunities internally or externally.

The type of development opportunities available to managers depend on the business context, individual learning needs and styles, and organisational resources available. Management development in general is covered in a separate factsheet.

Go to our Management development factsheet

Creating a strategy

Quite often the HR team will involve the chief executive and senior management team in the development of an international management development (IMD) strategy as its success will help to provide the next generation of global leaders in the organisation. Our International management development guide¹ identifies the following ways in which the organisational development strategy of an organisation can influence the approach to IMD.

Headquarters-oriented: Organisations with strong control systems, centralised business strategy and strong leadership from headquarters (HQ) often adopt a centralised approach and have a tendency to develop talent pipelines from home country based individuals. Senior teams also tend to come from the HQ country.
Separate operating units worldwide: Organisations adopting this global strategic orientation rarely have IMD policies and prefer to manage potential within individual country operations.
Regionally-oriented: Senior regional managers will work with country-level management teams to identify high-potentials who can be moved around the region.
Globally-oriented: In a truly integrated global operation, responsibility for identifying and nurturing high potentials is usually a joint task for senior managers from all parts of the organisation’s global operations. One organisational goal will be to use the international assignment process to foster an international mindset in the manager being developed and also by developing people from different countries to bring diversity to the future senior team.

Part of an organisation’s IMD strategy will be to decide what competencies they wish their managers to develop in order to be future leaders in the company. There are clear differences about what makes an effective leader in different countries. One study, the Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) project, has identified three leadership styles (charismatic, team-oriented and participative) which are universally regarded as most effective.

For more information on competencies, see our factsheet on competencies.

Go to our Competency and competency frameworks factsheet

IMD in the context of talent management and succession planning

IMD is part of an organisation’s talent management and succession planning process. One objective will be to make sure talent is being developed at all levels of the organisation and HRD professionals will want to make sure that there is a balance between home-grown and acquired talent to build on corporate culture but also to bring in creativity and new thinking. Identifying talent is a crucial first step: for global organisations, this is an even more complex issue as it requires an IT system which is compatible in different countries to ensure that comparative data is readily available on employees, their skills, knowledge and experience gaps and developmental objectives.

Methods of identifying talent can include:

submission of names of high-potential employees to the corporate centre
centralised monitoring of performance review data
360-degree feedback
assessment and development centres
evaluation from development programmes.

Organisations must always look to the future and identify managers who can take on key roles in case of people leaving or suddenly being absent. However, the speed at which most organisations are changing often as a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions, the constantly evolving skills and competencies needed, and issues around retention, all mean that it is hard to plan with certainty. Most organisations see IMD as a critical component of succession planning in providing people who will be ready to take on key roles in global organisations when they are needed Often management review boards meet to look at development decisions and performance ratings in the context of the people dimensions of strategic corporate reviews.

For more information, see our factsheet on succession planning and our talent management research page.

Individual career capital

Managers want to invest time and energy in developing themselves in order to be able to carry out their current role as effectively as possible for intrinsic job satisfaction and good performance ratings and consequent financial reward. They also see the value of making themselves as marketable as possible, particularly in volatile employment markets where they might have to look for alternative employment.

Individual managers need to make sure they have skills in place in the following areas:

knowing how – qualifications, experience and soft skills necessary to perform a role
knowing whom – individuals and networks of fellow professionals who will be helpful in developing potential
knowing why – motivation surrounding their job role.

Different types of developmental opportunities

Most international organisations have formalised development planning systems and look at how individuals need to be developed as well as looking at the formal requirements for the post. The approach will usually be an integrated one, with a range of IMD programmes linking into broader organisational and career objectives for managers at all levels. This is part of the shift from training to learning, with a move away from traditional, instructor-led, content-based interventions to learning as a self-directed, work-based process leading to increasing the capability of people to deliver high performance². Managers will also be assigned mentors and coaches and take part in learning sets and project-based learning as part of their development.

See our factsheet on Developing senior managers for more information on development of this particular group.

Go to our Developing senior managers factsheet

International assignments

One way in which organisations develop individual career capital for managers is by sending them on an international assignment. This builds individual career capital and organisational capability. For more information on international assignments generally, see our factsheet on Managing international assignments.

Go to our factsheet on Managing international assignments

There are several factors influencing an organisation’s decision as to whether to send someone on an international assignment for management development purposes. These include:

the cost of the package
the acceptability to the local operation
the individual’s learning objectives
the manager’s mobility status (and family considerations)
the ability of the organisation to measure the effectiveness of the development experience
the opportunity for using knowledge gained in the organisation for future career development.

With this in mind, organisations must take a strategic approach to how international development assignments can support their global strategy and distinguish between global/local short term business needs and the long-term development of future leaders.

Selection criteria and process

Lists of selection criteria for managers operating internationally often mention the following skills, competencies and behavioural traits:

technical and managerial ability
stress tolerance (for example, dealing successfully with cultural adaptation and individual anxieties relating to this) and resilience
emotional maturity (the ability to cope with and manage complexity and diversity) and flexibility (the ability to adapt to role changes and possible conflict)
communication (listening and articulating skills in order to build social and business relations)
cultural empathy (having an understanding of and an ability to work within the local culture).

Research suggests that often the selection process is not carried out in a formal objective way, sometimes because of a limited pool of candidates available for the assignment, especially when it is a technical one or in an undesirable geographical location. HR professionals should guard against this because in such cases criteria are often not stated explicitly and selection decisions can be made as a result of networking and assumed reputation, which have negative effects on increasing the diversity of the potential senior management pool.

Preparation

Pre-departure preparation is essential to increase the chances of success for the manager in adapting to the international assignment and quickly being able to input effectively into the work environment. Such preparation could include training, briefings, visits and work shadowing. Sometimes the manager’s partner and family are included in this as family failure to settle in the new country is one the main reasons for failure in international assignments.

On-going support is necessary once the manager is on assignment to continue the adjustment process and to make sure he/she gets the maximum benefit from this developmental opportunity. Sometimes a buddy system is put in place to make sure that the manager has a readily available contact for advice, information and support.

Performance measurement

This is one of the most difficult areas, but an essential one if the assignment is to be a valuable development opportunity. An objective appraisal of assignee performance is likely to be more complex than it is in the home country because the whole performance management system is complicated when it involves people who are located in different countries. Two major challenges are:

reconciling the tension between the need for universal appraisal standards with specific objectives in local operations
the cultural acceptability of the principle and practice of appraisal in different countries.

Measures which organisations put in place include:

combining formal performance appraisal with visits from senior managers from the home country
visits back to the home country for the appraisal interview, but with peer or other manager reviews from host country colleagues
objective assessment against performance measures (sometimes using a balanced scorecard approach)
online appraisal system with input from a variety of stakeholders.

Where appraisal systems are local, they have the advantage of cultural sensitivity and local knowledge, but allow little benchmarking between managers from different parts of the world. Global systems can enable comparisons to be made but they can be culturally insensitive and therefore subject to employee antipathy.

Repatriation

This is often a neglected area of the assignment process. It needs to be done properly in order to ensure that both the organisation and individual gain the maximum benefit in terms of the knowledge, skills and capabilities developed during the assignment. On-going evaluation with the manager needs to take place during the assignment and long before returning in order to identify what competencies have been acquired and how these can be used in the next role, whether this is another international assignment or a job in the home country. There will need to be discussions around preferred roles/business areas, and current mobility status and expectations need to managed with regard to promotion.

Alternative international working arrangements

Even though the number of people on international assignments overall is increasing, expatriation to traditional destinations is decreasing for a number of reasons, including:

the high cost of assignments
availability and desirability of posts being held by highly educated and skilled locals
limited mobility of managers due to dual career and family issues.

There has been a shift towards other types of international working for business reasons and also to provide developmental opportunities for individuals. Some of these are:

Short-term assignments: assignments with a specified duration, usually less than one year. Families might go too.
International commuting: the manager commutes from home country to place of work in another country, mostly weekly or bi weekly, not accompanied by families.
Frequent flying: where an employee goes on frequent business trips overseas but doesn’t relocate.

These types of assignments are often seen as a key way to develop managers with high potential for senior roles, indeed international experience is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for a senior management role. Even though international costs are high, organisations perceive that the benefits to the individual and organisation outweigh these. When the assignment is predominantly for development purposes, HR will be looking to assess the development of competencies and the level of knowledge transfer, amongst other value indicators, to determine the success of the development. Possible outcomes will include increased adaptability, cultural empathy and the ability to deal with complex international business issues.

Executive development programmes

An important element of international management development for high potential managers is participation on formal development programmes, often at leading business schools in the UK or indeed worldwide.

There is a wide range of different types of programmes and it is the role of the HRD team, in consultation with line managers, to select an appropriate course for international staff. Our guide¹ looks at trends in executive development which is now seen as an intrinsic part of developing an organisation’s strategy as well as a potential source of competitive advantage. Organisations are very involved in decisions around the design and delivery of executive programmes and usually opt for a modular and multi-site approach, with inter-modular projects and designated facilitator to integrate learning into the organisation. They want action learning as well as elements of distance learning ranging from Internet chat rooms to more sophisticated virtual learning products. Most organisations try to integrate managers’ development into organisational growth, using customised programmes where individuals have to develop a continuous learning approach. Programmes are not just an event, they are a process which can be used to bring about and embed change in organisations. A key indicator of an effective IMD programme is the need to adopt a truly integrated approach with, for example, a range of formal programmes, action learning, international assignments and knowledge sharing all linking into broader organisational and career objectives for managers.

Coaching is often used as a way of developing individual managers, and it is particularly appropriate in a complex international situation. For more information, see our factsheet on Coaching.

Go to our Coaching factsheet

References

HARRIS, H. and DICKMANN, M. (2005) International management development. Guide. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel And Development. Available at http://www.cipd.co.uk/guides
SLOMAN, M. (2005) Training to learning. Change agenda. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Available at http://www.cipd.co.uk/changeagendas

International management development: an overview