Chinese expatriate management in emerging markets: A competitive advantage perspective

Recent research draws attention to the large number of expatriates sent abroad by Chinese multinational corporations (CMNCs), especially to emerging markets. It is generally assumed that their large number, and any competitive advantage this generates, relate predominantly to their low cost, compared to other MNCs' expatriates and/or locally available labour. Our research uses an integrative perspective drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), international human resource management (IHRM) and “country of origin” literature and extensive case-study research on 27 CMNCs in 12 emerging markets. This reveals that the competitive advantage created by Chinese expatriates is closely related to the use of expatriates at both managerial and operational levels. It is achieved through human resource management that exploits their relatively lower cost, higher productivity and hardship tolerance (compared to host or third country counterparts) and their knowledge/resource reconfiguration capability, through a centralised and collective expatriation management system. These together enhance CMNCs' competitive advantage through not only offering cost effective and differentiated products but also transferring the reconfiguration knowledge. This study enhances understanding of the competitiveness of emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) by showing how the competencies, combination and management of their expatriates create a distinct source of competitive advantage. It also advances IHRM research on expatriates by investigating their use from a competitive advantage perspective.     

The Determinants of the Boundary-spanning Functions of Japanese Self-initiated Expatriates in Japanese Subsidiaries in China: Individual Skills and Human Resource Management

Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) who work for a subsidiary of a multinational enterprise from their country of origin and hence are familiar with both countries' language and culture can be expected to act as boundary-spanners between the assigned expatriates sent from the parent country and host country nationals, and between the headquarters and the subsidiary. We develop a new model of boundary-spanning that encompasses both individual and organizational antecedents and validate the model using survey data from Japanese-affiliated companies in China. We find that familiarity with Chinese language and culture and the potential dual allegiance of SIEs contribute to enhancing their boundary-spanning behavior. We also find that relationships of trust among the parties concerned (social capital) and global career opportunities for such self-initiated expatriates (geocentric staffing) have positive influences on their dual allegiance. Finally, normative and systems integration of human resource management are associated with increasing levels of social capital and geocentric staffing.     

Opportunity and opportunism: The expatriation practices of Indian information technology multinational corporations

Although effective International Human Resource Management during an international assignment constitutes a significant factor in ensuring success of an expatriate assignment, there has not been much research that studies the expatriation practices associated with the global delivery model that has come to be identified with global outsourcing. The purpose of this paper is to understand the expatriation practices of Emerging Market Multinational Corporations (EMNCs) in the Indian IT sector, by examining the experiences of Indian IT workers sent to work on international client projects in a western country. We have used qualitative semi-structured interviews with 47 Indian IT expatriates from Indian IT MNCs working at client sites in Australia. We find that there is inadequate attention paid to expatriation both prior to emigration and while workers are overseas and employed at client sites. Such human resource shortcomings may be inherent in the global delivery model that is an important feature of Indian IT business. The implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.     

Embeddedness and the repatriation intention of assigned and self-initiated expatriates

Expatriation research has been intrigued by the question of how to prevent the unplanned return of expatriates to their home country. Although a majority of studies have focused on assigned expatriates (AEs), only recently have researchers expanded the scope of analysis by focusing on self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). For SIEs, research has identified job embeddedness as a key explanatory concept for early repatriation without yet acknowledging its potential to also explain the early expatriation of AEs. However, because AEs and SIEs differ in important motivational and behavioral aspects, the lack of comparative studies prohibits a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which job embeddedness influences early repatriation. We build on belongingness theory to conceptualize early repatriation as a compensatory reaction of expatriates to an inhibited need to belong. Using a unique sample of 345 expatriates from 40 countries, we show that off-the-job embeddedness is more important for explaining the repatriation intention of AEs than of SIEs, whereas on-the-job embeddedness is more important for explaining the repatriation of SIEs compared to AEs. Our integrative model carries important theoretical implications for expatriation research and provides managerial implications for recruiting and retaining AEs and SIEs.     

Managing Yopatriates: A Longitudinal Study of Generation Y Expatriates in an Indian Multi-national Corporation

This paper provides a study of HRM practices for a new category of expatriates - “Yopatriates” - who we note as young, highly qualified and mobile, Generation Y (Gen Y) knowledge workers. In contrast to traditional expatriates, Yopatriates typify non-traditional forms of expatriation wherein they seek short-term international assignments to suit their individual (internal, rather than organisational or external) career orientations of learning and travel. We study this group using a case study analysis of a large Indian Multi National Corporation (MNC) delivering global information technology (IT) and business process offshoring (BPO) services. Our study presents the HRM practices adopted to manage both expatriates as well as Yopatriates at the case organisation being studied within an India setting. We further evaluate the extent to which internal HR practices of Yopatriates were characterised, by a desire to emulate or adopt what were regarded as global ‘HR best practices’. Our distinctive contribution lies in extending the literature by developing a distinctive theoretical category of non-traditional expatriates that (1) highlights a need for a different set of HRM practices; and (2) extends the theory of cultural adjustment in the context of Yopatriates. Evidence suggests that these practices were complementary and at the same time contradictory to ‘indigenous’ localised practices during the period of research and complied with two of the four arguments we make in our model.     

Improving Expatriation Success: The Roles of Regulatory Focus and Burnout

The study empirically and theoretically contributes to the human resource management discipline by developing and testing a cohesive model drawing on the pertinent literature from expatriate management, burnout and regulatory focus theory. Drawing on data from 233 expatriate managers, the study aims to examine the relationships between expatriate adjustment and the outcomes of job satisfaction and withdrawal cognitions via expatriate burnout. Specifically, the findings reveal that (a) higher levels of both work adjustment and interaction adjustment lead to reduced expatriate burnout, with the former having a greater effect on burnout than the latter; (b) burnout serves as a full mediator between work adjustment and withdrawal cognitions, and a partial mediator between work adjustment and job satisfaction; and (c) regulatory focus serves to moderate expatriate adjustment–outcome consequences, i.e. promotion‐focused (as opposed to prevention‐focused) expatriates demonstrate a stronger burnout–job satisfaction relationship. Several implications are extracted from the study for regulatory theory, burnout and expatriation management practices as well as suggested avenues for future research.     

Understanding the Self‐initiated Expatriate: A Review and Directions for Future Research

The study of self‐initiated expatriates (SIEs) has gained pace in the last decade, focusing on these individuals, their motivations, their behaviours and their relevance to the global workforce. Published works produced between 1996 and 2011 are reviewed. A thematic analysis indicates that key topics of focus in current research cover: characteristics of the self‐initiated and their work‐related experiences and management; comparative studies of company‐backed versus self‐initiated expatriation and the self‐initiated as global talent flow. This paper identifies a need for clarification of the construct of SIEs, expands on the theoretical perspectives used to examine SIEs and offers a framework to facilitate coherence in the direction of future research and the application of knowledge to practice in this field of study.     

Consequences of expatriate top manager replacement on foreign subsidiary performance

Integrating expatriate staffing and leadership succession literature, this study investigates the influence of expatriate top manager replacement on foreign subsidiary performance and the moderating effects of subsidiary context. Building on a refined understanding of agency theory and evidence from 2113 firm-year observations, including 260 expatriate successions, this study shows that when expatriates are replaced, regardless by whom (either host-country national or expatriate manager), the performance of the subsidiaries declines, suggesting that the departure of expatriate top managers often see subsidiaries being left in a less than favorable condition. If the subsidiary's prior performance has been unsatisfactory, the newly appointed expatriate might not be able to prevent further deterioration of its performance. Replacing expatriates with host-country national managers can help improve subsidiary performance, but this usually happens in older, more established subsidiaries. These findings framed in a refined agency theory provide us a more in-depth understanding of expatriate staffing failure.     

Forgotten travelers: Adjustment and career implications of international business travel for expatriates

In this study, we demonstrate the importance of assessing international business travel in the context of expatriation. Based on the Job Demands-Resources theory, we suggest that engaging in international business travel is beneficial for expatriates when certain conditions are in place and detrimental when they are not. We propose that expatriates who have adequate job resources will reap the benefits of international business travel and achieve better adjustment to living and working in the host country and have greater career satisfaction. Survey results based on a sample of 161 expatriates provide support that engaging in international business travel is positively and indirectly related to expatriates' career satisfaction through expatriate adjustment when job resources are abundant, and it has a negative indirect association when resources are low. We further find that job resources play a role in the relationship between international business travel and career satisfaction primarily when the host-country culture is similar to that of the home country.     

Engaging institutions in global careers: highly skilled self-initiated expatriates’ journeys through a Nordic welfare state

Recent years of research have highlighted the phenomenon of self-initiated expatriation and clarified the individual agency that underlies it, such as its motivational drivers, thereby depicting it as one form of boundaryless career. Yet as a consequence the role of wider institutional and structural contexts has been left under-theorized. This article provides a much needed examination of the interaction between institutional contexts and agency in self-initiated global careers. It advances the understanding of how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are influenced by and engage institutions in constructing their global mobility and careers. The research is a field-based study of SIEs’ encounters with the institutions of a Nordic welfare state and consists of interviews, observations, and document analyses. It makes a relevant addition to understanding how the self-directed expatriation of highly skilled professionals is institutionally moderated. It expands knowledge by showing how SIEs engage and potentially aim to influence public institutions and discourses to further their global mobility and work experiences and by providing a differentiated and distributed view of agency in self-initiated expatriation. While institutional environments condition global mobility and work experiences, they are potentially also influenced by the global talent that flows through them.     

Intra- and inter-regional diversification,subsidiary value chain activities and expatriate utilization

Although it is well established in the current staffing literature that why and how multinational enterprises (MNEs) allocate more or fewer expatriates in some subsidiaries than others, little is known about why and how some MNEs utilize more or fewer expatriates than other MNEs. This paper builds on regionalization theory to argue that intra- and inter-regional diversification has to do with the overall use of expatriates in MNEs. An empirical investigation of Korean MNEs demonstrates that the degree of intra- and inter-regional diversification has significant impacts on the level of expatriate utilization by MNEs. The results also reveal an interesting moderating influence of subsidiary value chain activities. MNEs tend to vigorously adjust their use of expatriates in downstream subsidiaries depending on the degree of intra- and inter-regional diversification. However, they do not adjust their use of expatriates in manufacturing subsidiaries upon the degree of international diversification. Overall, this study extends our understanding of how MNEs manage a geographically dispersed organization in a semi-globalized world.     

International Diversity Management: Global Ideals and Local Responses

While the concern with demographic diversity in organizations has increased during recent years, international diversity management still remains an understudied area. This is unfortunate since the transfer of diversity management practices within multinational corporations faces particular challenges in balancing between global integration and local responsiveness. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some of the central problems that multinational corporations need to deal with when transferring diversity management practices from headquarters to local subsidiaries. This is illustrated by the results of an ethnographic field study on Danish expatriates in a Saudi subsidiary. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.     

Exploring the motivation and willingness of self-initiated expatriates,in the civil engineering industry,when considering employment opportunities in Qatar

This paper provides empirical and contextual insight into the complexity of Self-Initiated Expatriates’ (SIEs) experiences in a unique setting. Factors that influence SIEs in the civil engineering industry, when considering overseas employment in Qatar, are identified and considered. Drawing comparison to organizational expatriates (OEs), this paper uses semi-structured interviews conducted with professionals from the civil engineering and construction industries. The research surfaced that different factors interconnect to affect individuals’ decisions about overseas employment. Three factors, specifically; location appeal, host country as an employment setting and effect of expatriation on the family, appear to be more influential to participants when the proposed destination is Qatar.     

Control mechanisms of their subsidiaries by multinational firms: A multidimensional perspective

Multinational companies use a wide range of mechanisms to keep control over a subsidiary abroad such as the share of capital in the case of international joint ventures, expatriation, active participation in the board of directors, staffing key management positions, training and socialization of employees, technology transfer, and so on. However, only a few empirical studies on the control of international subsidiaries embrace all these dimensions simultaneously and show how they interact. This paper presents the empirical results of a quantitative survey of 316 subsidiaries, international joint ventures and wholly foreign owned enterprises, set up in China by European and Japanese multinationals. The main objective of the survey is to bring out an inductive multidimensional model of control, and to allow a better understanding of complex interaction and balance between the instruments of control of a subsidiary abroad.     

Fostering operational management “Best Practices” in subsidiary plants in the Western Balkans: The role of MNC home-country environment and resource allocation

We investigate the adoption of operational management “best practices” in multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary plants in the Western Balkans. Building on the Practice-Based View (PBV), we suggest that subsidiary plants are more likely to operate according to widely recognized best practices, if these practices are already common in the MNC home country. We also examine the degree to which the MNC can facilitate best practices in their plants by allocating organizational and human resources. We test our hypotheses using survey data from subsidiary managers and secondary company data (n = 129), supplemented with manager interviews (n = 14), collected from European, U.S., and Asian MNCs with subsidiary plants in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and North Macedonia. Results indicate that the subsidiary plants adopt practices that are common in the MNC home country. They do so to a greater extent when the MNC commits organizational resources to the plants, such as codified written procedures and trainings. Contrary to our expectations, there is no benefit to allocating human resources, such as expatriates and business travelers. We provide insights into the transfer and implementation of best practices in the Western Balkan context, enhance our understanding of the PBV by presenting a specific application of this theoretical perspective, and provide practically relevant results for managers and policymakers.     

When do host country nationals help expatriates? The roles of identification with the multinational enterprise and career development support by the subsidiary

In this study, we examine the roles of the host country nationals (HCNs)' identification with the MNE and perceptions of subsidiary's career development support as key factors in explaining the HCNs' decisions to provide help to expatriates. Using data collected in four countries (Australia, China, India, and Singapore), we show that HCNs' identification with the MNE and subsidiary's career development support are positively related to their extra-role helping behavior toward the expatriates. Further, the positive relationship between MNE identification and extra-role helping behavior becomes stronger when HCNs perceive that their career development is well supported by the subsidiary. We also provide post-hoc analyses to explore the potential differences of the four host countries in these relations.     

Subnational FDI Legitimacy and Foreign Subsidiary Survival

We examine how organizational ecology and the strategic choice perspective can be combined to provide more contextualized insights into how multinational corporations (MNCs) can better counter environmental pressures with evolving subnational FDI legitimacy and improve the survival likelihood of their subsidiaries. We consider three organizational identity-based strategic choices, i.e., country-of-origin (COO) agglomeration, expatriate staffing level and subsidiary ownership level. We hypothesize a U-shaped relationship between FDI legitimacy and subsidiary mortality, and that this relationship will be moderated by the level of COO agglomeration at a subnational level. We also hypothesize that with improving FDI legitimacy, the use of higher levels of expatriates and ownership will jeopardize the survival of larger subsidiaries. A longitudinal dataset (2001–2016) for 3025 subsidiaries formed by 1147 Japanese MNCs in China was used in hypothesis testing. Results largely supported our hypotheses. We discuss how an identity-centered approach can contribute to theory and practice.     

Exploring the Career Capital Impact of International Assignments within Distinct Organizational Contexts

The existing expatriation literature concentrates on what individuals need to perform in an international assignment (IA) but neglects what they gain from their foreign work experience. Using a dual‐dependency perspective this study presents results from 26 in‐depth interviews with international secondees within two UK‐based organizational contexts. The paper explores the perceived impact of an IA on the career capital of individuals, showing that the outcomes of IAs can be equivocal for expatriates. Each firm concentrated their human resource mechanisms on developing different types of career capital and this focused individual behaviour on diverse career capital activities. In one of the organizations there was an internal misalignment between organizational and individual assignee focus. Based on the research a number of propositions were developed. This study provided an exploratory insight into points of departure rather than complementarity in individuals' international careers in organizations, which has been at the core of much recent research and writing. A more complex, contextualized picture of the effects of IAs on the careers of individuals emerged.     

Corporate expatriate career development

Western business expatriates assigned to Hong Kong responded to a mail survey regarding availability and usage of corporate career development activities. Despite the strategic need for expatriation, it was found that corporate development activities had a low availability indicating little interest on the part of parent organizations to assist in the development of expatriate careers. Large-size parent organizations, with substantial interests in international business operations, generally provide more expatriate career development assistance as opposed to small and medium-sized enterprises with fewer resources and little experience to cater to such needs. Experienced expatriate managers generally use more career development activities than less experienced managers, which could pose a problem for the procurement and advancement of new generations of expatriate managers. Implications of these findings for managers and their employers are discussed in detail.