I’ve written previously about INSEAD academic Linda Brimm’s book The Global Cosmopolitan Mindset, in which she highlights the benefits of having people in your team who have experienced living and working in multiple countries.

She believes that the cosmopolitan mindset of the book’s title has three core elements to it:

• A growth mindset – this is something examined in great depth by Stanford’s Carol Dweck, and can be characterized as a belief that intelligence can be developed, and a desire to learn new things, embrace new challenges and generally persist in the face of setbacks.
• A global mindset – which is defined as the ability to see and understand the world from multiple perspectives.
• A creative mindset – the last characteristic is one that is defined by attitudes such as curiosity and a tolerance for ambiguity.

All of which, when taken together, leads Brimm to conclude that such cosmopolitan workers are key to our success in this chaotic and disruptive period in time.

A recent paper from the London School of Economics flips this perspective on its head, and asks instead whether firms with a global perspective provide better jobs than firms with a predominantly local outlook.

Finding good jobs

The first challenge that faced the team was to identify just what qualifies as good jobs in the first place.  It’s an issue that has been of growing interest in recent years, with David Graeber memorably railing against what he refers to as “bullshit jobs”, which he believes around half of the jobs we currently struggle through qualify as. It’s a problem he argues causes great psychological distress, not least in societies where our work is so strongly associated with our sense of self-worth.

With the rise in gig economy work and zero hours contracts, there has been a concern that many of the new jobs created in recent years are of the “bullshit” kind, and there is, therefore, a desire for any new jobs that are created to be good.  In a recent report, the RSA argue that good jobs need to be measured according to things such as whether the job is secure, with guaranteed hours, whether it pays well and doesn’t enact physical or emotional harm on the worker, whether it uses (and develops) our skills, provides us with autonomy and a sense of purpose, and empowers us via good leadership and employee involvement in decision making.

The LSE team found that when they compared 16 years of data on firms, workers and international trade in Portugal, there was a clear distinction between firms who were operating internationally and those operating domestically.  Their analysis found that international firms consistently offered better opportunities and experiences to staff.

Thriving internationally

The researchers suggest that managers at international firms tend to enjoy higher salaries precisely because of the international experience these firms expect from, and utilize, in their managers.  The managers at these firms are required to have an ongoing accumulation of new skills, and are given ample opportunity to show those skills off.  This helps both the firm to grow, which in turn makes it easier for those managers to earn a higher income.

“We will have at the senior level a lot more candidates that have international experience via Erasmus, and we’re working with the local universities to get students onto secondment and provide this real pathway into the firm,” Khalid Talukder, CEO, Stanhope Financial, who have recently set up a new office in Lithuania, told me. “We’re really looking for entrepreneurial talent who aren’t confined by rigid mindsets, but who also have knowledge of how the mature financial markets work.”

The impact of international firms on the success of staff was greater not only when compared to domestic firms, but also when comparing any differences between large and small firms, or even between firms with different management styles and structures.  The researchers suggest this makes sense in many ways, as the upper echelons of the various “best places to work” lists are typically dominated by multi-national firms, due in large part to the better management observed, and the diversity of experiences among the workforce.

Previous research from LSE also found that workers are paid around 20% more when working for the most innovative firms.  The research found that not only are the most innovative firms significantly more likely to have a higher skilled workforce, but that working alongside these highly skilled people raised the income of those in lower skilled roles.

A fertile environment

As Linda Brimm highlights, to thrive in such an international environment requires a certain mindset, and the LSE analysis clearly shows that those best able to succeed within international firms were the most able employees.

Their data showed that the return on each additional year of experience (whether domestic or international) was significantly higher for more capable managers, with the gap between the incomes at domestic and international firms growing as the ability of managers grows.

Of course, I’ve written several times before about the challenges international workers face in an era of tightening immigration rules. It’s a concern that has manifested itself in a paper produced by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which both highlights the crucial role immigration grows in fueling productivity and economic growth, but also the risks of political short-termism resulting in this talent supply being shut down.

“The reality is, it is talent that is in shortest supply,” the authors say. “Nations that prioritize its development, its attraction, its retention, and its movement across borders will be best positioned to compete. In a world of machines and algorithms, competitive advantage will come from the exchange of human capital.”

The evidence seems increasingly stark that both the best talent and the best jobs emerge in environments that are global in outlook.  In a world that appears to be increasingly shutting down, it’s perhaps no surprise that Harvard Business School recently highlighted this as a central risk to American competitiveness in the future.

In a world that is striving for good jobs to allow us to emerge successfully from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s vital that we overcome a desire to hunker down behind nationalism, and maintain the global outlook that has served humanity so well over the last few decades.