Multi-level impacts on perceived career opportunity from global integration: human capital development within internal institutional environments

Using human capital and institutional theories, we analyze the impacts of individual- and office-level factors on the career perceptions of employees in a globally integrated firm. More specifically, we examine factors related to both employee human capital and their institutional operating environments that might influence whether employees perceive that their careers would benefit from greater global integration of their company. The hypotheses were tested using survey data from 398 employees nested within 44 offices in 15 countries, collected from a single multinational company. We find evidence that two of our hypothesized human capital-related factors (shared clients and service years) at the individual level and three of our institutionally-based predictors at the office level (office size, office centrality and client multinationality) have significant impacts on perceived career benefits from global integration. We also find marginal significance for a fourth office-level factor (office performance). This study contributes to the relatively limited literature on local employee career perceptions, while also helping to reconcile different streams of literature by simultaneously examining multiple levels of analysis. By utilizing hierarchical linear analysis, the study is able to differentiate between individual- and office-level effects.