Issues and Trends in Expatriate Management

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

The opportunities to work abroad are more today than they have ever been in the history of mankind. The big planet Earth has become a small global village and sovereign barriers seem to have disappear. While working in a foreign country, some individuals

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.

Horst Treiblmaier* Institute for Management Information Systems Vienna University of Economics and Business Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria1

This research data paper will include the following statements, the satisfaction or job hazards. What is the goal or purpose behind the proposed research? What type of interview structure would be asked? Why? What are some questions that would be asked? Why? What are some distinct advantages of a qualitative data gathering strategy, such as participant

The first step for quantifying expatriation experiences is to implement and maintain a tracking system. HR needs to make it a priority to create or find software that easily tracks the costs and ROI related to the expatriation program. Solvay admittedly had difficulty with the back office

In addition, the interview with its setting being less rigid, helped contribute to a more relaxed atmosphere for the respondents and allowed them to spend more time with the questionnaire/interview. As well as it allowed for the interviewer to build a rapport with the respondent, which meant the respondents were active in the interview. This further helped because there was the opportunity to explain questions and probe for more details and to ask spontaneous questions. This research method provided a good control over the sampling audience.

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.

On a professional level, repatriation programs help global firms to build a strong unifying culture. By recognizing the employee’s experience abroad the firm at large gains from the foreign knowledge and perspective of the country of which they are partnered. This sharing of experience allows the company to learn, appreciate and integrate the firm’s multi-national staff members. In addition, repatriation programs allow the returning employee to share the knowledge they acquired while overseas in order to

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)

In summary, the home culture of an expatriate predisposes them to certain behaviors and situations. It allows them to operate efficiently in that environment. However, moving to the host-culture changes that operating environment and makes their 'mental software ' less efficient and effective. Culture is clearly a relevant variable when expatriating employees and their families for international business assignments. Training can be applied to ameliorate these effects. Also, training provides insight into the procedural, substantive and informational aspects of their work and personal life in the host location.

The company can hire individuals from the country the headquarters are located (home country), hire individuals from the country the new location is in (host country), or hire individuals from other countries other than the home or host company (third country). Of course, the company could hire any combination of the three. When hiring from either the host or third country option, the person hired is considered an expatriate. The hiring decision for a multinational company opening in a new country could be an immense one for the Human Resources Department (HR). The HR department has to consider the cost to the company with hiring locally or hiring expatriates and the reliability and production of the new employees that they will hire. Each of these crucial choices has their pros and cons to each side of them. Recruiting locally, within the country, could benefit the company with many factors such as cost benefits, the new employees having knowledge of local professional customs and regulations, etc. Recruiting from the home or third country category, better known as expatriates, to work for the company has many advantages which could assist the company in many ways that local recruitment could not. The following pages go into greater detail on the processes and issues companies must complete when deciding between a local hire and an expatriate.

While the numbers of expatriates across the world have been increasing so has been the difference in their performance or the outcome of the assignment. Research in recent years has been able to partly explain the reason for such variances that have largely been attributed to culture, manager support, home country support and so on. However one of the most crucial aspects, pertaining to the psychological impact of the location that the expatriate moves into, or the sense of security the expatriate expects to feel while on their assignment has largely been ignored (Bader and Berg, 2013).

Repatriation is the process of returning back home from the expatriate assignment. It has been noted that middle level managers who have completed their expatriate assignment and are returning to their home countries have opted to leave their mother companies due to a failure to readjusted and reintegrate. This has led to the high turnover middle managers that are repatriating to the United States. The United States of America has the majority of employees who are under the expatriate scheme. These expatriates are expected to have a positive career development which has been the opposite in reality. This current study tried to explore the causes of the high turnover rate and the

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.