A foreigner or a Pole – which employee to choose?

The work presents the results of the preliminary research on the employment of foreigners’ that were conducted among Polish banking institutions being the international corporations with a global reach. The initial results of the analysis shows the potential impact that specific employment policies exert on personal attitudes of foreign executives and operations of the companies in which they are employed. The analysis described in this work identifies the most important elements which hinder the development of those banks whose employment policies are based on the assumption that hiring foreigners is more beneficial than taking on local managers regardless of their familiarity with Polish market mechanisms. The qualitative research that were conducted in the form of the scenario-based interviews, were carried out with both, a group of managers (mainly heads of HR departments and senior executives) cooperating with the foreigners on everyday basis, and the foreigners themselves. The preliminary studies have revealed a number of trends and phenomenon that were described within this work.