Third‐country Managers in Multinational Corporations

The staffing policy of most multinational corporations (MNCs) is increasingly criticized as being discriminatory and counter to multinationalization. Despite professed adherence to the principle of staffing top positions according to merit rather than nationality, MNCs tend to do otherwise. They prefer to reserve the top positions in their subsidiaries for parent‐country managers (PCMs), or to limit the managerial staff in their subsidiaries to host‐country managers (HCMs). Naturally, these policies do not represent a multinational approach; the first gives preference to PCMs at HQ and in the subsidiaries, and the second makes it almost impossible for HCMs to reach top positions at HQ or in subsidiaries outside their home country.