An expatriate is a person sent outside his country to work in a temporary basis. After accomplishing the job, the person will return to his position in the same company and in the same country.
The main reason for a company to use expatriate assignments is that they need a person with deep knowledge of the company´s strategy, procedures and philosophy to work in a subsidiary. What the organization expects is that this person transfer to those working in the subsidiaries new skills and knowledge, organizational learning and the completion of the proposed assignment.
It is true that a person working in the headquarters of the company is more related with the strategies and procedures, but expatriate can face problems and deal with mistakes such as:
§ A succession plan is not created so when the person accomplishes his assignment the company doesn’t have another suitable person for the job.
§ Sometimes the candidate is chosen because of his managerial and technical skills, but his adaptability is not measured, what could lead to a failure of the assignment.
§ It is important to provide a proper cross-cultural training, if not, the outcomes will take longer or may not be the expected ones.
§ The person working abroad must feel safe about his returning that he will have his position back in the company.
§ Because of problems of adaptability a person could return early or quit. 40% of expatriates return early meaning high costs for the company.
There are three levels involved in expatriate assignments:
1. Individual: An individual may feel that rejecting an expatriate assignment could be perceived as if the person is not committed to the company (powerlessness); he may also feel that he needs to go abroad just because the company asks him to do so (good corporate citizen); or he may feel that he is developing his career.
2. Company: It could use expatriate to fill a position with short term objectives or to develop competences to bring home.
3. Industry: Expatriates can build national and industry expertise and can transfer cross cultural skills.
There are three alternatives and four approaches for expatriate assignments.
Alternatives:
1. Parent Home Country (PCN): using a person from the office’s headquarters; they are very familiar with the organization and the way to do things.
2. Host Country National (HCN): using a person from the new subsidiary’s country. They know how the host country works and are very familiar with the culture.
3. Third Country National (TCN): using a person from a third country. He might be the best prepared and most suitable for the job.
Approaches:
1. Ethnocentric: The parent country is the best and its nationals are the one that know better how to work in the organization.
2. Polycentric:
3. Geocentric: using the best guy wherever he comes from.
4. Global staffing approach: it means finding a global manager who can develops well in any country in any job. It might be just a dream.
For managing expatriates and avoiding possibilities of failure it is important to have appropriate selection criteria, good preparation, proper compensation and a succession plan.
OVERSEAS EXPERIENCES
It is a personal decision to go abroad in a temporary basis. Its goals are the individual development, geographical exploration, cultural experience and career development. It is done through savings and casual earnings and for a boundary less career.
Some believe that an oversea experience has no apparent career value, but from it can result several good things such as valuable social networks, broadening perspectives, awareness of cultural differences and building confidence and independence.
QUESTION
Explain one of the causes for expatriate assignment failure and provide 3 recommendations to address it.
One of the causes for expatriate assignments is the inability to adjust to the new environment, what at the same time can be caused for several reasons such as cultural shock, the inability of the expatriate family to adjust or the impossibility to match the lifestyle they had in their home country without going into huge personal expenses.
Must people suffer in some degree of cultural shock but if the person was prepared enough to deal with differences he will be able to go overcome that shock without major consequences. The impossibility to match the lifestyle the expat and his family had in their home country is normally a matter of cash, which can be prevented from before doing a proper investigation about possible expenditures and how much does it cost for the company providing the expatriate with almost the same resources; it could be done through an evaluation of the purchasing power parity or consulting with experts in that matter. But when the problem has to do with the inability of the family to adjust is usually a bigger problem, because it does not has to do with the expat himself or with the company itself, it is a problem beyond the control of the organization but affects deeply the expatriate and his performance.
So here I propose some possible recommendations to address the inability for the family to adjust could be:
- Prepare the expat as well as his family to deal with the differences in the new culture, giving accurate information and giving them possible scenarios that can be found in the new country.
- Test the ability of the expatriate and of his family for adjusting to new environments, because there might be another person with good skills as well and less possibility of early return.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Inkson, Kerr et al. 1999. Expatriate assignments and overseas experience – contrasting models of international human resource development. Journal of World Business. 34: 351-368.
Images from www.istock.com