Career development of host country national managers in the overseas subsidiaries of Japanese firms

本研究项目的目的是调查日本公司海外子公司东道国国家管理人员在其个人网络方面的职业发展，并利用本研究的结果和启示来制定更有效的管理培训计划。虽然母国国民的外派是昂贵的，并不总是成功的，日本管理人员，回国后，可以改变企业文化或母公司的战略（Saito, 2008a）。对于公司高管来说，国际经验被认为是进入高层管理的入场券。同时，由于子公司越来越多地面临与姐妹子公司的内部竞争（Takahashi, Takenouchi, & Saito, 2007），因此必须创造知识以适应当地环境（Takenouchi, 2008b），当地经理的职业发展成为经理本人和公司的重要问题（Yamada, 2008）。我们有以下两个发现。首先，正如之前的研究表明的那样，虽然通过工作经历带来的职业发展或转变确实是个人的，但与工作场所其他成员的关系会影响对这些经历的看法。也就是说，个体的网络可以将某些经验转化为“发展性经验”。其次，在东道国招聘的日本人可能会在当地管理人员和日本侨民之间发挥桥梁作用，就像“知识转换器”一样。

The purpose of this research project is to investigate into career development of host country national managers in overseas subsidiaries of Japanese firm in terms of their personal network, and to utilize findings and implications from this research to develop more effective management training program.Although expatriation of home country national is costly and is not always successful, Japanese managers, after repatriation, can make change to corporate culture or strategies of the parent companies (Saito, 2008a). For the corporate executives, international experiences have been considered a ticket to top management. Meanwhile, because a subsidiary is increasingly facing internal competition with sister subsidiaries (Takahashi, Takenouchi, & Saito, 2007) and so have to create knowledge in order to adapt to local environment (Takenouchi, 2008b), career development of local managers becomes important issue for both managers themselves and firms (Yamada, 2008).We have the two followings findings. First, as prior researches have suggested, though career development or transformation brought about through job experiences is truly personal, relationships with other members in the workplace have impact on perception of those experiences. Namely individuals' networks can turn some experiences into "developmental experiences". Second, Japanese stuff recruited in the host country may play bridging roles between local managers and Japanese expatriates, as "knowledge transformer".