New insights into reproducing transnational corporate elites: the labour market intermediation of executive search in the pursuit of global talent in Singapore

This paper provides new theoretical and empirical insights into the reproduction of transnational corporate elites between firms’ internal labour markets, rather than from expatriation. Theoretically, the paper advances understandings of the reproduction of transnational corporate elites by drawing on a pioneering engagement with the global talent, transnational elite and labour market intermediary discourses. These new theoretical insights are generated through an original case study of the role of global executive search firms in Singapore who create pipelines for the recruitment of transnational corporate elites between firms’ internal labour markets. The findings also highlight the vital role of Singapore’s neoliberal labour market practices and Foreign Talent programme to ‘win the war for talent’. By situating this research on the agency of executive search in reproducing Singapore’s transnational corporate elite, the paper’s overarching contribution is to ‘decenter’ North American and ‘Western’ perspectives on the reproduction of knowledge on transnational corporate elites.