Abstract
Schlunze(2004) showed that the geographical approximation to Tokyo is important to implement European management practices. Plattner showed that locational preferences vary with urban hierachy (Plattner 2005). Research on foreign firms in Japan indicated that the integration of analyses on the work and life of foreign managers is necessary to explain fully the corporate behavior of foreign firms. We observed the interconnectedness of these issues and became more encouraged to shift the focus onto the behavioral aspects of managerial decision making. To our knowledge, systematic work on the locational adjustment and preferences of foreign managers in Japan is still sparse. However, former approaches focused on environmental determinants affecting international managers' decision making, whereas nowadays managers are rather seen as "change agents" because increasing competition between firms set them on emergency routes (Thrift 2000). Here, a new framework is introduced to evaluate the locational behaviour of foreign managers.
The research purpose is to explain how the locational behavior of foreign firms is influenced by the individual characteristics of foreign managers, such as life-style and locational preferences. How does the globalization process affect the acculturation of foreign managers and therefore locational decision making in global cities?
An analytical framework was developed that incorporates characteristics of the performance of foreign managers. On the one hand, the individual working and life style impacts the creation of synergy effects. Individual locational preferences of foreign managers directly affect the quality of locational decisions of foreign firms. Using a framework to evaluate a) the life-style and b) the locational preferences by conjoint-analysis, we conducted structured interviews with more than 30 managers.
The metropolitan area Tokyo-Yokohama received most headquarters of foreign firms and therefore has got the highest concentration of foreign expatriated managers. In comparison, the internationalization process of the Osaka-Kobe area did not advance that much. The relative high concentration of Asian firms and the reluctance of Western firms to locate their headquarters in Osaka or Kobe can be interpreted as a more regional orientation or as a left behind within the internationalization process. This is also reflected by the spatial behavior of foreign managers.
The mobile elite increasingly concentrate in Tokyo-Yokohama. They do not depend on social and cultural interaction with Japanese as much as the foreign managers working in the Osaka-Kobe area. Meanwhile in Tokyo the 'mobile elite' of foreign expatriates can rely on the support of international experienced Japanese, foreign managers operating in the Osaka-Kobe area need to have more skills for operating in the local Japanese/Asian business environment and therefore need to undertake more acculturation efforts. Here, the hybrid manager type, who is trained in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese and often even married to a Japanese national, tends to be more effective in the local business environment. The results from the interview survey led us assume that indeed locational decisions of foreign firms depend on the foreign managers' ability to create synergy effects internal as well as external to the organizational framework of the firm and to learn about the local business environment.
We can conclude the more a business environment advances in the internationalization process, the less the foreign managers do need to make an effort to adjust to the local culture. Global managers do operate best in the global city! In locations with a lower degree of internationalization foreign managers are expected to create synergy effects with a more localized approach.
