DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MANAGEMENT STAFF AND OPERATIVE PERSONNEL

However, the international assignment of personnel and measures for the internationalisation within companies is mainly related to management staff and experts. As a rule these possess a high-grade professional training, often highly remunerated, and with their special know-how they are regarded by their company as a valuable resource (Kammel, Teichelmann 1994 p 29, p 63). In relation to the operative workforce, decisions are made by quite different criteria. Here the question of costs comes clearly and almost exclusively to the fore. Therefore decisions are usually made in favour of local recruitment. Only in special, exceptional cases a posting of these groups of employees is considered at all. This probably also happens because the recruitment of quantitatively and qualitatively sufficient personnel via the external labour market is generally regarded as unproblematic. For the realisation of construction projects in international joint ventures, however, this point carries an additional importance. The construction of infra-structure establishments is last not least subject to decision by government authorities. The considerable costs and the partly massive ecological intrusions connected with the construction of such projects as the crossing of estuaries or straits by tunnels or bridges, or high-speed corridors for cars and trains are often justified to the local population by arguing that this creates employment. Thus the need for legitimation by the governments concerned would not permit this employment to be quasi exported. This would be the case if foreign companies were charged with carrying out such projects, companies that would then not only bring their own managing staff but also their own workers. As a rule therefore this workforce is supplied by one or more local joint-venture partners, or recruited from the local labour market. This is also mirrored by the fact that the term mobility is essentially only used when dealing with the question of an international assignment of management staff and experts. In as far as workers leave their home country in order to seek work in another country, either by their own initiative or due to recruitment, one usually speaks of migration or labour migration instead. In contrast to the otherwise quite common use of the term migration, Stalker (1994 p 4) subsumes under this term each kind of stay in another country which does not expressedly and actually serve any touristic purpose. In this way he is able to distinguish five types of migrants: emigrants who go to another country to reside there permanently; contract workers who stay in another country exclusively for the purpose and term of a working contract; illegal immigrants who are often potential emigrants (without permit) and in some cases also potential contract workers (without formal, legal contract); asylum seekers; and professionals, that is managers and experts with a higher training, who are mostly active in internationally operating companies. The last group, however, make up only an infinitely small fraction of world-wide migration (Stalker 1994 p 3). In connection with the migration of professionals there has mainly been discussed the problem of the so-called brain drain, also the emigration of highly qualified labour from Third World Countries to the U.S.A. or to Europe.