Multinational firms and the quest for global talent: Employing (skilled) foreign workers at home and abroad

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Belderbos, Rene; Leten, Bart; Nguyen, Ngoc Han; Vancauteren, Mark
• 署名单位: KU Leuven; Maastricht University; Maastricht University; Hasselt University; University of Groningen; Ho Chi Minh City University Economics
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/s41267-023-00643-w
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 151-173
• 关键词: knowledge-based view; MIGRANTS; contextual distance; skill-intensive

摘要

Multinational firms can access global talent in two ways: by employing migrants in their home country, or by employing foreign workers in their overseas affiliates. Taking a knowledge-based perspective, we conceptualize these employment decisions as simultaneous and subject to management coordination. Substitution effects are greater when there is a larger wage cost differential between home and host countries, leading to a cost-reduction motivation for foreign expansion and the offshoring of employment. Substitution also occurs when R & D intensive firms employ highly skilled and internationally mobile foreign workers and employ these where the worker's knowledge and skills can be most productively put to use. In contrast, a complementary relationship occurs when the migrant country exhibits a high contextual distance with the home country of the firm, leading to knowledge (diversity) benefits of migrant employment at home when expanding abroad. Analyzing employee-employer and foreign affiliate data for multinational firms in the Netherlands (2008-2016) and estimating simultaneous equation models, we find support for these hypotheses. Our findings suggest that policies that restrict immigration may have a negative impact on the competitiveness of home-country multinational firms by limiting their ability to engage in value enhancing coordination of domestic and foreign employment growth.