ABSTRACT
In an increasingly competitive global environment, organizations are showing a renewed interest in understanding how employees create and sustain the organizational performance necessary for competitive advantage (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). In her 1994 article, “Competencies: The Precious Seeds of Growth?” Wisher recognized the significance of understanding the larger contextual environment of international business when she noted the growing power of companies to transcend borders of nation states in an era of “technical and commercial revolution” resulting in many businesses that literally have no boundaries (Wisher, 1994). This trend suggests a need for human resource assessments that can identify the characteristics of executives who successfully transcend international borders. The absence of information about the behavioral characteristics that support executive success and the context in which those behaviors are practiced in international business is a major gap in the theoretical and practical literature. Therefore, this chapter presents research designed to identify the individual competencies that are linked to executive success in a multinational setting. I argue that organizations with executives who possess these competencies build an international organizational capability.
