Measuring workplace internationalization: Incorporating self-reported measures of international engagement

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Résumé (anglais)

This paper constructs a multi-criterion index to assess the degree of workplace internationalization in Canadian workplaces in a major nationally representative dataset – the Workplace and Employee Survey. The measure, referred to as the degree of workplace internationalization (DWI) index, is designed to capture an inclusive representation of internationalization consistent with globalization. It is made up of two parts: an observed measurement component and a self-reported component. The observed measurement component is the sum of two ratios: ‘foreign sales to total sales’ and ‘foreign ownership to total ownership’. The self-reported component is the summed result of two scale measurements: ‘importance of international competition’ and ‘importance of expanding into new geographic markets’. The value-added of the DWI index is the self-reported component, which integrates the consequences (importance of international competition) and opportunities (importance of expanding into new geographic markets) of globalization. The index is developed and verified in three stages. The first describes an effort to ensure measurement validity. The second stage examines the index’s measurement reliability by subjecting the DWI index to statistical tests common to psychometric theory of index building. In the third stage, the index is decomposed into an observed measurement component and a self-reported component. In separate tests, these components, along with the DWI index as a whole, are regressed against two sets of measures with known relationships with internationalization: the propensity to innovate, and the use of conceptual training programmes. The main result is that the index as a whole serves as the better proxy of workplace internationalization. finally, it is argued to be an improvement on existing measures of internationalization.