From Operational to Strategic Global Mobility: How to Build a Function That Creates Talent and Business Value

Almost every large organization moves people across borders to build leaders, fill critical roles, transfer knowledge, and expand into new markets. Few can say with any confidence what that investment actually returns.

From Operational to Strategic Global Mobility argues that Global Mobility has become one of the most important, yet often misunderstood, parts of how organizations enable international talent and global work. This isn’t only a book for the people who run the function. It has been written just as much for the CHROs and senior HR leaders who oversee it, the talent leaders who depend on it, and the business leaders who need international mobility to build capability, develop leaders, transfer knowledge, and execute strategy across borders.

This is a research-backed book, but not an academic monograph or textbook. It brings together evidence, experience, and two decades of work in the field to tackle the practical questions facing Global Mobility today. And it starts from a simple premise: operational excellence is essential, but it is the price of admission, not the destination. The strategic challenge is what comes next, i.e., understanding what excellent execution makes possible and turning that into meaningful talent and business value.

You will learn how to:

• Make the case for Global Mobility’s value in terms that resonate with senior decision-makers
• Distinguish between activity that looks strategic and outcomes that actually create value
• Build the organizational credibility and influence needed to turn good ideas into action
• Measure what matters, rather than simply what is easiest to count
• Keep the function relevant as AI and new forms of global work reshape what “mobility” means

Across three parts, the book moves from diagnosis to practice. It addresses why Global Mobility must change, the new realities shaping the function, and what it concretely takes to build a Global Mobility function that earns a seat at the table.

Global Mobility is not simply about moving people across borders. Its real value lies in what those movements make possible for people, talent, and the business. With a foreword by Dave Ulrich, From Operational to Strategic Global Mobility offers a research-backed and practical perspective on how the function can turn that potential into strategic value.

Benjamin Bader is Professor of International Human Resources Management at Newcastle University Business School and co-founder of MasteringGM®. His research on international assignments, global leadership, expatriate psychological contracts, and repatriation is widely cited in the field, and his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, ARD Tagesschau, CNN, and other international media.