Firms internationalizing their operations have always been challenged to select, develop, and implement a sufficient amount of foreign subsidiary manager talent. This challenge is exacerbated in today's global environment involving an increasing emphasis on transnational internationalization strategies and growing business opportunities in emerging markets. Successfully identifying and developing these managers is essential for a firm implementing a internationalization strategy, and necessitates the creation of effective high performance work systems practices that can lead to the development of a strategic international human resource system. This article integrates agency and organizational capabilities theory to better understand how human resource systems can be created to develop highly effective foreign subsidiary managers who can implement selected internationalization strategies. More specifically, foreign subsidiary manager capabilities are identified contingent upon the internationalization strategy resulting in an examination of different human resource practices that could be bundled together to develop foreign subsidiary manager talent.
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