Professional mobilities and career scripts: the case of an international manager career script in a multicampus business school[Mobilités professionnelles et scripts de carrière: le cas du script de manager international dans une école de commerce multicampus]

This paper examines how the internationalization of the employment setting is influencing the structuration of a career script of international manager in multicampus business schools. The increasing challenges of harmonization and coordination embedded in multicampus strategies are changing the value of international coordination roles. Based on Barley theory (1989), this paper studies the impact of a multicampus business school glocalization strategy on academic careers. Through the analysis of data collected at both individual and organizational level, the study exposes the impact of the increase of the coordinative effort on the school HRM practices and academic career perceptions. By showing the legitimacy factors of a career track of international manager, our study shows that in a context of organizational transformation, the emergence of a new career script is firstly based on new organizational needs and on the alignment of individual aspirations. Only later, the script can be anchored in the structuration process based on the organization and individual agency.