The Impact of Strategic Leaders’ International Experience on Organizations: An Integrative Review and Multilevel Framework

Internationally experienced business leaders bring distinct human capital, social capital, and cognitive schemas into organizations, influence strategic orientation through their decision-making, and in turn shape organizations’ strategies and performance. The impact of the international experience (IE) of an organization’s upper echelon has been studied in various bodies of management literature, varying in terms of the theoretical perspectives, conceptualizations of the IE construct, and outcomes considered. However, the effects are not straightforward with regard to which elements of IE affect which aspects of organizational dynamics, and how. This review integrates separate streams of organizational research to develop a more holistic understanding of the role of the IE held by strategic leaders such as chief executive officers, entrepreneurial founders, top management teams, and boards of directors, and its impact on organizational strategies and performance. We refine the conceptualization of the IE construct at multiple levels of analysis and explore cross-level mechanisms suggested by multiple theories to develop an integrative framework that links strategic leaders’ IE to organizational decisions, strategies, and performance. On this basis, we propose an agenda for future research.