Analysis of Factors Influencing Success and Failure of Expatriate Managers

Competing in global markets entail many factors and centralization of its human resource practices is certainly vital to improve global competitiveness and empower employees for global assignments. To achieve success in global marketplace, the challenge of all businesses regardless of their size is to understand global corporate cultural differences and invest in human resources which includes selecting and retaining talented employee, training and development whilst encouraging employees to be innovative and creative. Employees selected to work in foreign locations should be prepared beforehand with adequate cross-cultural training. For an organization to be successful in the international marketplace, it must be concerned with this fit from both an internal and

A global manager is associated with success as an international executive. Dimensions included in this are: general intelligence, business knowledge, interpersonal skills, commitment, courage, cross-cultural competencies, and the ability to learn from experience. My potential for success as a global manager would be on the cusp of being relatively high. In today’s global economy, being a manager often means being a global manager. But, unfortunately, not all managers are able to transfer their skills smoothly from domestic environments to global ones. I believe that I have the ability to accomplish this on a consistent basis.

Another factor in the success of an expatriate involves the expatriates pre-existing culture intelligence quotient (CQ). It is still uncertain that an expatriate’s success working internationally is determined by their CQ but it is crucial for expatriates working on international assignments because it is a sign of cultural competency.

Kreitner, R. (2009). International Management and Cross-Cultural competence. (11th ed.). Management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage

Performance criteria and goals are best established by combining the values and norms of each local environment with the home-office’s performance standards. An individual country profile should be developed and should take into account the foreign subsidiary’s environment. This profile should be used to review any factors that may have an effect on the expatriate employee’s performance. Such factors include language, culture, politics, labor relations, economy, government, control, and communication.

Selection and performance management programs that are designed for organizations that have expanded their U.S. workplace to other countries must be designed to take in many other considerations that normally wouldn’t make a difference if all the employees were from the same origin. Expatriate employees and their families should be assisted to help with adjusting to their new culture. Performance management and selection programs should be designed to incorporate the differences in ethical and cultural backgrounds that match the employees and or applicants who are overseas. This paper further examines what is necessary for selection and performance management programs for a U.S. based organization that is expanding overseas to China.

The essay recommended that managers from Australian need to be culturally sensitive and adapt to the host country in order to develop the business better and eliminate the gaps between different cultural people. Also, the Australian managers will be used some strategies as the benefit for managing in an overseas company.

Globalisation allows individuals, groups, corporations, and countries to reach around the world farther, faster, more deeply, and more cheaply than ever before. Most large local companies regard globalisation as opportunity, thereby exploring overseas markets for maximum market share and optimum business strategies. However, managers would face a series of challenges caused by leadership models, cultural backgrounds, political and economic risks, HR management, etc. To study multinational management skills is very useful for my future career. In this essay, I will set goals for this subject, identify the skills I have honed and need to improve, and explain my strategies for achieving goals.

For avoiding failure, expatriate managers must have certain competencies. Here the competencies to ‘handle stress’ and ‘cultural adaptability’ are discussed. Ability to handle stress is an essential competence that all successful managers must have. Expatriate mangers experience stress due to the culture shock, unhappy family settings, work load, increased responsibilities and due to difficulties of everyday expatriate life. If the manager is competent to manage stress using sufficient stress management techniques, he will be able to control the situation and can become a successful manager. Another important competency required for the expatriate managers is cultural adaptability. An expatriate manage can perform well abroad if he has the competency to adapt to multi-cultural environments. If they have competence of cultural adaptability, they can easily develop a global perspective for their business. Such expatriate managers are able to recognize cross-border opportunities and can identify risks with a global perspective.

This is an exciting time for our company. As we look to the future, the demand for a more visible and global company are vastly approaching and our company will be a part of this multinational expansion. This guide has been prepared for the employees participating in our first trial run of U. S. Expatriates. Your mission is extremely important. This guide will give instructions on to what is expected during your international assignment. As CEO of the company we want to thank you for your willingness to participate in our global expansion into our new global markets. We have done extensive research and have chosen to start the U. S. Expatriate program in Australia and Singapore. There are multiple benefits for employees who chose to accept this position. Throughout this guide we will identify the benefits, challenges, compensation and travel incentives, as well as rules of conduct in foreign countries. Thank you again for daring to step outside of your comfort zone to be the first participants in our U. S. Expatriate assignment. (Price, 2012)

A lot of expatriate managers in new markets, difficult for them to perform in new location.

Designing performance management systems for international assignees involves considering a number of key factors including: the impact of factors such as foreign exchange fluctuations on the performance of business operations (Black et al., 1999); insuring that there is a clear understanding of performance objectives of the assignee and ensuring that the appraisal is measured the same in varying countries and identifying the persons best placed to evaluate the performance of the assignee. The key to the success of managing the performance of expatriate is recognizing the need to adapt the appraisal system to account for the host context, and demonstrating the limitations of using standardized systems.

TCS is well aware of the problems that expatriate faces at foreign location such as culture shock, alienation etc. Therefore the company follows a set of actions for expatriate’s career development.

In the case study “Kelly’s Assignment in Japan”, it is very apparent Kelly’s expatriation was extremely mismanaged. Both her family and company were ill-prepared for the transition.

This research paper is based on the cultural barriers which hinders employee performance to a great extent. Staffing is one of the biggest issue one faces in the global market. Companies today strive to diversify their workforce as much as possible by hiring employees from various backgrounds. There are three main staffing strategies a company can implement when entering an overseas market, with each having its advantages and disadvantages. The first strategy is a home-country national strategy. This staffing strategy uses employees from the home country to live and work in the country. These individuals are called expatriates. The second staffing strategy is a host-country national strategy, which means to employ people who were born in the country in which the business is operating. Finally, a third-country national strategy means to employee people from an entirely different country from the home country and host country.