Proceedings of 13th Asian Business Research Conference 26 - 27 December, 2015, BIAM Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, ISBN: 978-1-922069-93-1 Corporate Elite Mobility: Relationship between Internationalization and Top Executive’s Job Prospect Rimi Zakaria It is believed that executives learn a great deal about the overall business environment and the details of markets and products from being actively involved in firms’ international operations (Zahra et al., 2000). Internationalization, commonly referred to a process of extending firm operations beyond national environments, is a phenomenon of importance for the firms since it has useful knowledge implications to the executives and the firms (Athanassiou and Nigh, 2000, 1999; Zahra et al., 2000). This study examines the implications of knowledge-based theory of the firm by underscoring the appropriability, portability, and transferability aspects of tacit knowledge that is attributable to top-level organizational members, particularly considering the phenomenon of corporate executive migration. Acknowledging that firms appropriate rent from the managerial human capital, i.e., knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience of their corporate elites, this paper argues that the level of a firm’s internationalization is an essential determinant of their bargaining capacity with regards to their future employment. More specifically, the topic of interest is whether the knowledge gained from internationalization of an organization positively contributes to an executive’s job prospect in terms of size and performance of the new firm, complexity of the position, level of compensation on the new job, and time taken to find reemployment. Because favorable firm attribute is a source of enhanced self-esteem of an organization’s top employees, we expect that high-caliber top executives would value joining larger and/or more profitable firms. Therefore, we develop and test the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: A firm's degree of internationalization is positively related to the migrating executive’s new firm’s size where he or she accepts reemployment. Hypothesis 2: A firm's degree of internationalization is positively related to the migrating executive’s new firm’s performance where he or she accepts reemployment. Hypothesis 3: A firm's degree of internationalization is positively related to the complexities in the position that the migrating executive holds in the new firm. Hypothesis 4: A firm's degree of internationalization is positively related to the level of compensation offered to the migrating executive at the time of employment in the new organization. Hypothesis 5: A firm's degree of internationalization is negatively related to the time taken by the migrating executive in finding the new job. Results, analyzed from a sample of 356 top executives who migrated from one U.S. multinational to another within the period of 1999 to 2007, generally support this perspective that knowledge gained from internationalization relates to executives’ negotiation power with regards to future employment prospect. Considering the theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications of the current study, the directions for further research are discussed. KEYWORDS: Knowledge-based Theory; Internationalization; Corporate Elite Mobility; Managerial Human Capital; Rent Appropriation; Bargaining Power Submission Track: Management __________________________________________________________ Rimi Zakaria, Assistant Professor of Management, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, 800 W. Main Street, HH 4523, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA, Email: zakariar@uww.edu