A common practice in multi-national enterprises is to staff important managerial roles in overseas operations with personnel from the company’s country of origin: expatriate managers. Homecoming expatriates often experience that the competence they have acquired abroad is not recognized when returning home. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how expatriates experience that international assignments affect their careers. The theoretical framework used includes sociological theories from neo-Marxist theory, Bourdieuan career theory and expectancy theory. This thesis uses qualitative methodology and a phenomenological approach to investigate the purpose and the research questions. The empirical part of the thesis has been conducted in two phases where five international mobility managers have been interviewed in the first phase. In the second phase interviews where held at a multi-national Swedish headquartered company where five interviews were conducted. The results indicate that there is a discrepancy between how company representatives (managers) and employees consider international assignments and expatriation in relation to employee careers. There seems to be a lack of clear understanding of the impact of expatriation on employee careers and also of the career value of an international assignment for an employee.

Cette thèse de doctorat examine la carrière des managers dans un contexteinternational. Plus précisément, elle s’intéresse aux parcours et modèles de carrièredans un contexte en évolution en prenant comme exemple le cas des managersinternationaux. Nous nous focalisons sur la nature évolutive des carrièresmanagériales, les environnements organisationnels et globaux dans lesquels lescarrières se développent, et la relation réciproque qui existe entre des carrières etdes environnements en évolution. Tous ces aspects sont explorés à travers troisarticles qui reposent sur trois terrains empiriques distincts.Le premier article analyse les profils de carrière des top managers européens dansun contexte d’internationalisation accrue. Des données sur le profil et la carrière deplus de 900 top managers dans quatre pays ont été collectées et analysées. Le butest de vérifier l’hypothèse d’une stabilité des modèles nationaux de carrière etd’identifier les éléments nouveaux liés à l’internationalisation.Le deuxième article se focalise sur les profils des dirigeants des plus grandesentreprises suisses. Nous nous sommes intéressés à l’évolution historique sur 30ans (1980–2010) des profils et des carrières d’environ 600 top managers. Cet articlemet en évidence le développement en Suisse d'une communauté internationale detop managers étrangers et analyse les changements dans leurs profils et dans leurscarrières.Le troisième article s’intéresse à l'adaptation interculturelle d'une population de 152employés étrangers (expatriés traditionnels, expatriés volontaires, migrants qualifiés)et 126 conjoints. Cet article étudie différents aspects de l'adaptation, en seconcentrant sur la maîtrise de la langue locale et les pratiques organisationnelles desoutien à l’expatriation. / This doctoral dissertation examines the career of managers in an international context. Specifically, this research focuses on careers patterns in a changing environment using the case of international managers (i.e. managers with a career that develops globally). More broadly, the research looks at the evolving nature of managerial careers, the organizational and global environments in which careers develop, and the reciprocal relationship between changing careers and changing environments, specifically in the context of those with global careers. All these aspects are explored in this doctoral dissertation with three research articles that use three different sets of empirical data.The first article analyzes the career profiles of top European managers in the context of increased internationalization. Data on profiles and careers of more than 900 top managers in four countries has been collected and analyzed. The purpose is to verify the hypothesis of stability in national career models and identify new elements related to internationalization. The second article focuses on the profiles of top managers at the biggest Swisscompanies. We focused on the evolution of profiles and careers of about 600 topmanagers over a 30-years period (1980–2010). This article highlights the development of an international community of foreign top managers in Switzerland and analyzes the changes in their profiles and careers.The third article focuses on the cross-cultural adjustment of a population of 152foreign employees (traditionally-assigned expatriates, self-initiated expatriates, skilled migrants) and 126 spouses. This article studies different aspects of adjustment, focusing on local language proficiency and relocation support practices.