Abstract

A persistent concern among multinational enterprises (MNEs) is how to develop the global talent within their ranks to remain competitive in an increasingly complicated global environment. Despite this concern, the reality of how well MNEs do in this regard is underwhelming. Levy et al. (2015) indicate that employees from MNEs' parent country perceive more leadership opportunities than employees from subsidiary countries. This troubling reality indicates that MNEs have yet to truly maximize their “global” talent pool. Rather, they seem to focus on developing the cross-cultural competence of headquarter talent, signaling little opportunity for advancement to nationals across the MNE beyond the parent country (Caligiuri & Bonache, 2016; for empirical examples see Khoreva, Vaiman, & Van Zalk, 2017; McDonnell, Hickey, & Gunnigle, 2011; Stahl et al., 2012;).