Introduction
Emergence of expatriation
Before the advent of globalization, the world was fragmented. Countries rarely interacted with each other unless during wartime. As a result, a country’s economy was sheer reflection of the business activities within the country. Nearly all businesses were local firms being set up to fulfill a country’s need and demand. With such business environment, firms only concerned with satisfying local’s need. Their products were designed to meet the need of local consumers. Even if firms were performing well in its home countries, they would just consider opening more branches within the countries. Never would they think about reaching out to foreign markets because of the great difficulty connecting to other parts of the world.
Business practice was fairly simple at that time. Firms would hire local workers and talents for production and operation. For firms with several branches, all branches would adopt identical business practices since they were operating in the same countries. There was no demand of “expatriate”.
After Globalization
Emergence of MNCs
The marching of globalization, however, complicates business world and changes many of commonly used business practice. Before going into detail, let’s have a brief understanding of globalization.
Globalization is [1]“a process which diminishes the necessity of a common and shared territorial basis for social, economic, and political activities, process, and relations.” This definition points out that there are at least five dimensions of globalization. The one that relates most to business world is economic globalization. [2]Economic globalization means globe-spanning economic relationships. The interrelationships of markets, goods and networks created by transnational corporation are the most important manifestation of this. In fact, globalization can be divided into 4 stages, starting from [3]globalization 1.0 (19th Century) to 4.0 (2008 to present). Each stage had its own impact on global economies. The stage with the greatest influence to business is Globalization 2.0 in which WTO, successor of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established. One of the key aspects of WTO is to foster free trade through negotiation and gradual removal of trade barriers. Because of the loosening trade barriers and tariff, there is a trend for firms to expand their markets beyond the national boundaries of a single country. As a result, firms are competing with each other in one huge global market. Many of them even operate in different countries throughout the globe to grab more potential markets. Thus, more and more firms have become multinational corporations (MNCs).
Emergence of expatriates
In order to reach out to potential consumers in other countries, many MNCs will set up subsidiaries in host countries and base their headquarter at home country. There are mainly three staffing strategies firms can adopt to manage subsidiaries: 1. [4]Ethnocentric- key positions in subsidiaries are filled with national’s workers from the firm’s country of origin to leverage a firm’s core competence, 2. Polycentric- subsidiary positions are held by nationals from host country to ease adaptation to local workplace and 3. Geocentric- positions are held by best available person regardless of nationality to leverage ideas worldwide. The term “Expatriation” emerged thereafter.
Types of expatriates
[5]Expatriates are defined as individuals who, irrespective of their national origin, are transferred outside their native country to another country specifically for employment purposes (Edström & Galbraith, 1977a). It, in fact, can be classified into [6]PCNs (parent-country nationals) from the parent country operations, TCNs (third-country nationals) transferred to either HQ or another subsidiary, and HCNs (host-country nationals) transferred into the parent country.
Reasons for expatriation
There are four key motives with respect to deployment of expatriates in MNCs. To begin with, host country nationals may not possesses suitable candidates to fill the position in which MNCs have no choice but to deploy expatriates. Secondly, some MNCs send out staff from headquarter to foreign subsidiaries as a means to deepen and enhance their competence in handling international business. Thirdly, deploying expatriates can increase the knowledge transfer within MNCs. Expatriates being sent out from headquarter can learn the business practice work best in host countries. Last but not least, some MNCs send out expatriates in order to exercise tight control on subsidiaries. Since expatriates (PCNs) know the practice of home country best, they can take the practice to foreign subsidiaries and it is very common in MNCs that would like to maintain standard business practice throughout the world.
The Shift In The Policy Of Expatriate Selection
Globalization helps in selection of expatriates?
As organizations globalize their operations, there is a highlighted need to identify and select qualified managers for overseas assignments. The increased complexity of these foreign assignments created the traditional selection procedures and processes used in the past. In particular, some evidence shows that expatriation becomes strategic as organizations grow and compete globally. Therefore expatriates’ assignments evolve into a global assignment scope and have to be viewed in a systematic manner.
How do selection procedures and processes take places in the past?
The selection of expatriate managers for assignments according to initial models documented that technical or functional expertise has been the primary criterion for selecting expatriate managers. (Mendenhall et al., 1987; Tung, 1981, 1982). Mendenhall and Oddou (1985) identified five categories of personal attributes related to successful overseas assignment.
1. Control ability : The degree to which an expatriate dominate and supervise local operations to ensure local workers efficiently accomplish the production goals.
2. Independent decision-making ability : For SMEs, internationalization is essentially an entrepreneurial activity (Lu & Beamish, 2001), and expatriates can be treated as entrepreneurs with many timely decisions to make. For large-sized MNCs, most expatriates are forced to act as “entrepreneurs” to make effective and often prompt decisions independently without consultation.
3. Openness to host nationals : Since host nationals can provide valuable social support, assistance and friendship, expatriates can learn more informal norms through the host nationals to improve their management efficiency, as well as interpersonal and communication skills.
4. Social networking ability : It is the willingness to communicate and establish social relationships with powerful external parties in host countries. Formal and informal personal networking with powerful local people, known as “Guan-Xi” by the Chinese, operates smoothly in China. (Wang & Kanungo, 2004).
5. Cultural awareness : It is a perceptual thinking which expatriates understand cultural subtleties can result in the best chance of coping effectively with unfamiliar situations. Like in Southeast Asia, they may have different culture-specific cases of local operation which requires expatriates to interpret them correctly and react appropriately.
All above abilities can be classified as “explicit knowledge”, according to the reading “Knowledge management and organizational learning in MNCs” – “Explicit knowledge is formal and systematic and can be easily communicated and shared with others.” Obviously, all these abilities can be clearly described and taught.
More on selection processes – “Coffee-machine system”
Although selection criterions are set clearly in the formal selection process, in reality, informal selection process “Coffee-machine system” has been using among senior managers in business practices. “Coffee-machine system” is the informal system expatriate selection that is initiated next to the coffee-machine where senior line manager colleagues spontaneously meet and causally discuss job related matters, where a comment or recommendation of a candidate for a certain abroad assignment might be presented. Then, the organizational process of selection is initiated only for justifying the decision that has been taken, and other available candidates are usually overlooked.
During the “meeting” beside the coffee-machine, knowledge connections has been developed and transferred rapidly. According to the reading “Knowledge management and organizational learning in MNCs”, “knowledge connections occur through formal and informal relationships between individuals and groups and help to build a common language, an inter-organizational structure and culture. With consciously managed knowledge connections in place new knowledge has a better chance to survive and to be integrated into the organization’s knowledge base.”
Coffee-machine system restricted the pool of candidates which limited the opportunities of competent candidates, especially female candidates.
Example 1 : Red Cross Case
In the Red Cross case, which is a well-known non-profit making organization, has come across difficulties from sending expatriates. Expatriates from Red Cross work very differently to be assigned to the local Red Cross office. In case of emergency situations, like the natural disasters happened, there will be no time for training and an experienced expatriate will be assigned to the site. Although they have been selected according to the proper traditional selection processes and screening criterions, however, their professional background qualifications did not prepare themselves to go expatriation. Therefore more related trainings, like overcoming cultural barriers, in form of real practical cases are suggested to Red Cross, which is more suitable for the expatriates’ foreign working conditions.
Example 2: Western to Asia
From the earliest days of expatriation practices, managers from Western multinationals were sent to Asia, South America, and other locations to fill needs in foreign operations that could not be satisfied with local labor, and provide a source of much desired control over the foreign operations. Local staff would have been unlikely to view themselves as comparable to expatriates because of the vast differences in backgrounds, qualifications, and experience. Thus, they were more accepting of expatriates being managers and of the privileges they enjoyed.
According to the reading “Developing the Next Generation of Chinese Business Leaders”, the author mentioned that “Mentoring is important in china. Because age and experience are so respected in Chinese culture, young, high-potential employees will greatly appreciate having an older, more senior mentor. Many expatriate mangers take a mentoring role to ensure that their high potentials’ development remains on track.” This shows that different cultures change the ways of management styles such as power distance and equality. Expatriates are still doing supervising and mentoring jobs. Equality among staff is still not yet developed. Outside multinational organizations – in universities, for example, among professors and trainers who are sent to places such as Asia, to team-teach courses where they receive much higher salaries than their local counterparts.
How do the selection procedures and processes shift nowadays?
Harvey and Novicevic (2001) describe a new expatriate selection process for global assignments. It is 8-step managerial procedures model to handle the information concerning critical components of selection.
Step 1: Identification of potential expatriate pool of candidates
Step 2: Assessment of IQ competencies of expatriate candidates
Step 3: Determination of learning styles of expatriates candidates.
Step 4: Determination of thinking styles of potential expatriates candidates
Step 5: Determination of assignment task and its internal and external environments
Step 6: Assessment of family characteristics
Step 7: Development of repatriation program prior to expatriation
Step 8: Selection of expatriate candidates and assignments
With this model, managers will be able to select the most suitable candidates for expatriation. It helps in accessing candidates on their competences, abilities and related factors whether they are capable in going expatriation or not. It is so different with the past selection practices that it does not only access abilities personally, but also in terms of family and organizational perspectives which enhance the minimization of negative impacts on expatriation.
What do organizations need now? (Selection Criterion)
In current practices, according to Dowling and Welch (2004), more factors have been illustrated for expatriate selection and are closely related to each other. Technical ability, cross-cultural suitability and family requirements are the factors related to the individual, while country/cultural requirements, language and MNC requirements are influenced by the situation.
Comparing to the traditional list of selection criterions, family requirements is included recently. The expatriate’s family/spouse influence the expatriate’s success abroad (Avril & Magnini, 2007; Dowling & Welch, 2004; Harris & Brewster, 1999). Families may suffer from the feeling of isolation due to inability to integrate into a new environment. The partner’s career, children’s disruption in education and the care of aging parents are aspects of family influences.
New selection system - Competency-based expatriate selection
It is a more comprehensive selection process of expatriate managers for increasingly complex global assignments. Potential expatriate managers have multiple ``IQs’’ that need to be inventoried to determine the unique skill set of each candidate (Sternberg, 1996). It includes IQ competences (analytical, practical and creative intelligences), learning styles, thinking styles and family characteristics. The ability is the basis of the competencies required to effectively manage in complex global assignments. With ``action assessment’’ styles, different competences can be determined to solve complex managerial problems and assess the performance of potential expatriate managers.
All the above unique skills discussed can be classified as “implicit knowledge”, according to the reading “Knowledge Sharing in MNCs – a theoretical approach” – implicit knowledge refers to a kind of knowledge which is highly personal, hard to formalize and thus difficult to communicate to others but deeply rooted in action.” Obviously, all these skills cannot be described clearly but can be found in behaviors.
Example 1: Asia to Western
New trend of expatriation is sent expatriates from Asia to western countries. These locals Asians are progressively more fluent in English, are trained in the West or in Western managerial ideology. They are of advantage that they have intimate understanding of the local culture and practices which less likely to encounter the adjustment and commitment issues faced by expatriates. Many Chinese graduates would continue their studies in overseas by working as teaching assistants and then bring all knowledge and skills back to hometown. With their experiences, it can bring benefits to organizations and even the government to have better knowledge base on organizational culture.
The reason of facing less cultural conflicts now, due to people understand more on ethical behaviors. According to the reading “When is different just different, and when is different wrong?”, people understand more on “management ethics differ among cultures, respecting those differences means recognizing that some cultures have obvious weaknesses – as well as hidden strengths.” They can collaborate much better with respecting for different cultural traditions, even though they still tolerate in some practices.
Example 2: Female expatriates
The role of gender is one of the concerns when selecting expatriates. In the past, the typical expatriate tends to be male. Reason behind is that host-country prejudice the role of gender across different countries. Like masculine countries Japan, Austria and Venezuela, they ranked the highest in Hofstede’s masculinity index over different countries which tend to promote men. Based on surveys in 1987, 85 to 95 percent of international managers are men. Thus, female expatriates face both external and internal barriers when taking on an international assignment.
In fact, the situation has been changing recently. According to the survey in 2006, there is a big rise in number of female expatriates (from International Journal of Human Resource Management). Due to a significant increase in more females getting higher education levels, it strengthens their abilities during the expatriation selection. In addition, according to the Runzhelmer International report, the stereotypes of female expatriates are not yet defined in the normal classification system. Thus, female expatriates have more freedom in their learning and thinking styles which can help them adapting to the new environment in the host countries.
We are not sure whether the assessment system would be continued to change or not. However, we believe that the selection and evaluation processes are still undergo the trends of knowledge sharing. According to the reading “Knowledge Sharing in MNCs – a theoretical approach”, “knowledge connections occur through both formal and informal relationships between individuals and groups and help to build a common language, an inter-organizational structure and culture.” The selection criterions may differ as long as they can enhance the expatriates to help the company to connect the knowledge sharing in different countries and integrated into the organization’s knowledge base for making profits.
The Shift In The Policy Of Expatriate Training
Along with the trend of globalization, as MNCs expand, expatriate assignments are thus becoming more and more important in the modern business world. This expatriate community is always critical to a business's success, yet most often, especially in the past business practices, training are not provided to the expatriate assignee to guarantee they can do the job properly.
In the Past
We can see that in the past, only a small percentage of MNCs have carried out sufficient training to expatriates. A study in the 1980s of the largest U.S. MNCs showed that only 25 percent have offered extensive pre-departure orientation training programs. The corporations have a number of reasons for paying so little attention to training, such as
- the temporary nature (short duration) of the expatriate assignments
- the ineffectiveness of such training programs
- the lack of time
- high costs
It seems that many expatriate assignors wrongly assume that assignees would be able to settle in well without providing much intercultural training or even none.
The Financial Impact of Expatriate Failure
The financial impact of the failure of expatriate assignments can be far more detrimental than the costs of providing training. According to a researcher Caudron (1992), the estimate costs of failure are between $250,000 to $1 million (in US dollars). This estimation is compared with the average costs of maintaining an expatriate manager at about $300,000 per year (1989). There are also indirect costs involved. The benefits of offering suitable training programs compare with the high costs and ineffectiveness involved in premature return have made MNCs nowadays review new approaches for cross-cultural training programs.
Cultural Shock
Thanks to the fast changing business world, the future trend of cross cultural training has shifted to more cultural specific, and more customized. The followings are the major shifts.
I. Shorter but Specific Sessions Approach (Customized)
The training practices have changed from no provision, days long training to much shorter duration training approach. The old-style intercultural training expatriate practices consist of two to three days’ training programs in an in-house area. These are often complained and least welcomed by most employees involved, who do not have that time available for pre-departure training. Consequently, there has been a shift towards shorter half-day to one-day programs. Two important things to mention is the programs have been tailored to the expatriates’ needs through pre-training analysis and the training session also include the expatriate’s partner and children. This made the training more customized and effective.
II. More Flexible, Two-way Training: Coaching
Globalization is continually changing the dynamics of the adventure for the expatriate employee and the
accompanying family. The number of expatriate assignments is still growing at a high rate which more than 66
percent of MNCs have reported an increase in the number of international assignments in 2006. The increase
in expatriate assignments is conducted in various forms, including long- and short-terms, repeated or
extended business trips. Therefore, a new shift – expatriate coaching, which provides specific support for all
involved in the assignment has been emerged to support these new kinds of flexible assignments. It is a
dialogue between the expatriate and the expatriate coach to establish values and goals and to set up a plan to
meet these goals.
Globalization is continually changing the dynamics of the adventure for the expatriate employee and the
accompanying family. The number of expatriate assignments is still growing at a high rate which more than 66
percent of MNCs have reported an increase in the number of international assignments in 2006. The increase
in expatriate assignments is conducted in various forms, including long- and short-terms, repeated or
extended business trips. Therefore, a new shift – expatriate coaching, which provides specific support for all
involved in the assignment has been emerged to support these new kinds of flexible assignments. It is a
dialogue between the expatriate and the expatriate coach to establish values and goals and to set up a plan to
meet these goals.
The expatriate coaching undergoes program customization process which is specific to the needs of expatriate. Its flexibility is marked by its independence to start at any time during the assignment period and complement intercultural training programs. A report of the Personnel Management Association shows that when coaching is used with training, individual productivity has increased by an average of 86 percent compared to 22 percent with training alone. The importance and effectiveness of expatriate coaching is thus increasingly recognized, with 3/4 of businesses use this method in intercultural training, reported in the CIPD survey in 2009.
III. Virtual Training Platform
Another apparent shift in expatriate assignment training approach is acknowledged as virtual training. Today, many cultural references are accessible on a virtual basis through mediums such as the worldwide web. Different from the traditional classroom approach, online intercultural training is made possible by the technology innovations. This online training class is provided to supplement in-person programs. A report issued by Brookfield Global Relocation Services in 2010 indicated that over 35 percent of respondents provide a web-based or media-based training course, with 25 percent offering it together with face-to-face instruction.
Apart from having the advantages of high effectiveness and efficiency, virtual training also provides a platform for continual learning for expatriates, which fulfilled the proposition of DiBella et al. (1996) that learning is an ‘‘innate, ongoing process’’ in organizations (Dynamic organizational learning: a conceptual framework). Due to the lack of time concern before departure, it is of utmost importance that top management should initiate and drive the process of learning through the virtual platform. Online courses are an effective medium which can be lasted, and knowledge can be accumulated and shared in this platform. How to ensure the returned expatriates to embed their learning into this virtual organizations and to bring benefit to the corporation, this required an effective learning framework and facilitation, which are critical to the learning as well as to the behavioral change process of expatriates.
Ericsson is a multinational telecommunication corporation headquartered in Sweden. In 2009, the company has a total number of 1,615 expatriates overseas. The premature return rate for Ericsson’s international long-term expatriates is 1 percent in the same period, which early returns have globally been estimated as 16 to 40 percent. Such a low rate, which remains a distance from the mentioned global rate, can be explained by the strong corporate culture of Ericsson. This corporation has long been known for taking care of its employees. Without the impact of strong corporate culture, the premature return rate may properly be higher.
Globalization has poses a great challenge to Ericsson. To be more productive and competitive in the business market, Ericsson should apply the new theories of cross cultural training. In current expatriate training practices of Ericsson, employees are offered to attend a one-day briefing session, which lasts for six hours before departure. Although both expatriates and their accompanying spouses can attend the course, which see the trend, the pre-departure training merely contains general information and no country or cultural specific training. The nature is neither customized nor specific. This leaves a room for improvement.
Post-arrival training is also organized by the host organization, in which culture-specific training and other general information are delivered. However, this is optional for the host organization to organize such an Induction Program. There is also a time lag problem (1 to 2 months ) which will generate cultural shock among expatriates, since many host organizations wait for the arrival of more expatriates before starting the training. Some host organization even simply distributes comprehensive printed materials without providing any post-arrival training. CCT has been marked its importance by many researches since culture impacts the behavior of people, managers have to know which consequences the existing cultural differences have in terms of the behavior of the employees (Knowledge Management AND Organizational Learning in MNCs). However, the cultural-related learning is not being paid too much attention by Ericsson. In Ericsson, it seems that the shifts of training practices are still on the way.
Cultural Shock |
Conclusion
In a nutshell, this is not the case that MNCs have demonstrated substantial improvement upon their practices of training and orientation in the past decades. What some training practices have in common is that they prepare expatriates on an assumption-based model. Yet, globalization still poses an impact on the polices of MNCs, many corporations start to realize the urgent need for adopting cross cultural training programs, and some are even applying the new approaches. From no training to implement training, the trend is moving towards a lower level of return rate and more customized and cultural specific training programs.
The Shift In The Policy Of Expatriate Compensation
The outdated compensation system
Traditionally, most employers provided overly generous benefits for their expatriate staff. The reward package usually included a high-end salary, private schooling for children, tax equalization, huge health benefits and frequent trips to home. They believe that the more they provide, the greater motivation and performance. However, this kind of reward system had a negative outcome that some expatriate employees became discontent during the assignment and therefore either returned home early, leaving the job unfinished or left the company. Even though some expatriate programmes were successful, they were very costly. Although different organizations have their own strategies in compensation system, when they choose, design an expatriate reward system, a few goals are shared including cost-effectiveness, the retention of expatriate employees and completion of the assignment.There are two main approaches to design expatriate pay packages: home country based pay and host country based pay.
Two common pay approach
Home-based pay approach aims to ensure that the value of the expatriate’s salary is the same as in the home country and added adjustments for cost of living allowances, tax equalizations, housing, insurance and pensions. However, these allowances usually fail to resolve the differences in purchasing power when the salary levels between countries are different. For example, an employee transferring from an Indian company to a Tokyo subsidiary, a dollar in Tokyo by much less than a Ruble does in India so the employee is not able to purchase same amount of goods if company uses on such compensation system. For the above problem, the actual home-base salary is used as the fundamental part to build a total remuneration package. The balance sheet approach ensures expatriate are not be worse off through working abroad. The approach starts with the actual home-base salary. Then, cost of living adjustment is added . This amount is used at home for everyday living and usually excludes income tax, pensions and insurance. Moreover, it excludes discretionary expenses which are not necessary to constitute daily living expense. To facilitate the calculation for the cost of living allowance, employers can take the index of Employment Conditions Abroad (ECA) as reference. The survey covers more than cities and measures the comparative cost of housing, transport, food, clothing, and entertainment. New York is used as the base city for the index and all cities are compared against New York. Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world of 282 global locations surveyed as at 1 July 2010. It is the most expensive for groceries and healthcare, and second only to Hong Kong for household accommodation costs. As for the tax equalization, benefits will be discussed in later part. The primary problem of home-base pay is that it can contribute to inequalities between the expatriate’s compensation and the colleagues in host country.
Unlike home-based pay, host-based pay provides expatriate with salaries and benefits in line with those given to the host country in similar position. This approach is certainly equitable for the perspective of employees in host country. However, the localized compensation may be much less attractive to employees to work abroad especially those who earn less than staying in home country. Therefore, instead of a pure localization, local plus plans are adopted to rewards assignees with higher compensation and special adjustment for housing and transportation.
Concerns on designing benefits
To ensure the “plus” in the local plus plan is cost effective, it should be designed to cater for the employees’ preferences. Following the financial compensation, family concerns are the other important concern. Spouses refuse to leave their career or relocate school-age children can be the issues for the rejections of international assignment. Employers thus have to provide job-findings for spouses or help them to secure work permits.
Added to that, a cultural background definitely affects the satisfaction of the reward offered. A study showed the correlation between financial rewards and nonfinancial or intrinsic rewards for each culture. “what we see is that engagement drivers differ more by country than by the work people do or the organization they are in”(Ketter,2008). Therefore, for countries such as Finland that has a low power distance and is feminine, intrinsic rewards are more important than financial rewards. For countries such as Hong Kong and the UK that have high power distance and are characteristically masculine, financial incentives are more important (Chiang & Birtch, 2007). To better understand the individual priorities of expatriate employees, a personal engagement scorecard can be created. Employees are asked to rank six categories-- company practice, opportunities, people, quality of life and competitive rewards. (Ketter,2008)Thus, employers will clearly understand the importance from one to six and formulate a satisfied compensation package to them.
More than that, some benefits such as pensions, health care may be less or even not existent in the host country. For example, in America, there is no public insurance so employees have to seek local private insurers which may not be able to cover all needs of the public ones. In this case, organizations opt for an international pension plans but they should be aware of the contribution from employers may be taxable for the employee. Therefore, they have to compensate the tax obligation.
Case study of Rabobank
Take the change in expatriate compensation policy of Rabobank as example to have a better picture of implementing a cost effective reward system. As an international financial service provider, Rabobank pay much attention to expatriate programme. Because of the increasing concern on international assignments, in 2009, they update the existing policy to benchmark their compensation.
The main area of change includes housing, location allowance and family well-being. In 2003 policy, they provided housing allowances to cover housing costs in the host country. The allowances were provided by an external data provider and based on job level, family size and location. While in some regions assignees were able to find suitable housing for less than the allowances granted, leading to additional cash benefits, in other locations they were having difficulty finding suitable housing within the provided allowances. Rabobank decided to change the policy on housing by from a cash to a reimbursement approach by providing actual rental costs for suitable housing. They expected expect to avoid unequal situations (gains and losses) and have all assignees living under the same housing standard conditions.
To save costs on the packages, they decided to re-categorize our location (hardship) allowances. While assignments to high hardship locations, like India, Indonesia, Brazil, Rwanda and other African countries are still provided with a significant location allowance, the allowances for countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and Poland have been decreased.
Some of the changes we have made have been to improve family well-being. One of these changes is the implementation of day care reimbursement instead of only paying for schooling costs from the age of three. The number of hours reimbursed depends on the working hours of the partner, up to a maximum of two days. Under this initiative we have increased possibilities for partners to spend more time on socializing and integration, personal development and work.
Conclusion
When there exists expatriate program for employees, they undoubtedly consider financial benefits offered and the career progression potential related with the international assignment. Therefore the compensation package is one of the most important factors that affect expatriates’ decision. As we all agree that successful expatriates can lead the competitive advantage for the global organization in today’s exceeding competitive market, compensation of expatriates is one of important component in the efficacy of MNCs. It is important they should strike a balance between the individual preferences of employees and cost effectiveness.
[1] Andrew Crane & Dirk Matten (2010). Business ethics-Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization, Introducing business ethics p.19, New York
[2] Christopher Chase-Dunn, Yukio Kawano, Denis Nikitin (1998), Globalization: A world-Systems Perspective
[3] Adopted from Globalization 4.0 and the new logisistics
[4] David G. Collings, Michael J. Morley and Patrick Gunnigle, (2008), Composing the Top Management Team in the International Subsidiary: Qualitative
Evidence on International Staffing in US MNCs in the Republic of Ireland, Journal of World Business, 43, 197–212
[5] J. Barry Hocking, Michelle Brown, Anne-Wil Harzing (2004) A knowledge transfer perspective of strategic assignment purpose and their path-dependent outcome, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 15 (2004), no. 3, pp. 565-586
[6] See appendix, chart 1
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