Expatriate assignments and Overseas Experiences

In this chapter we are going to analyze the features of the EA (expatiate assignment) and the OE (overseas experience) as social phenomenons that can change or strongly influence the individual's career and the companies' performance, the guide article of this topic is: Expatriate Assignment vs Overseas Experiences:  Contrasting models of international human resource development by Kerr Inkson, Judith Pringle, Michael B. Arthur and Sean Barry.

 According to the authors' definition EA consists in: "In Expatriate Assignment (EA), the initiative for the international experience comes primarily from a company which operates internationally. A position may become available in a subsidiary outside the country in which the company is based. The job requires both knowledge of the company's strategy, procedures, etc., and the ability to work and live successfully in a foreign environment ... In Overseas Experience (OE), the initiative for the international experience
comes from the individual. Typically, he or she will save money to bankroll the trip, resign from work, and set off overseas autonomously".

The authors highlight that in an open economy the OE could bring more benefits and better outcomes for the company in which the individual is going to work after his return to home, and for the sector in which his job belongs. The reason is the knowledge and the social skills that he got during his international experience could be more useful and relevant when the individual was the only one who takes the decision for himself based on his real motivations to explore and learn overseas.

The persons who have had an OE develop many valuable skills such as flexibility, a broader perspective and a critic thought, these skills could be applied in any type of company and could contribute to develop a more accurate insight of the international market conditions.

At the other hand, the EA is traditionally seen as a human resource management (HRM) issue, where this area selects, prepares the expatriate workers, gives them support overseas and plan their future repatriation, but this approach has been criticized by many authors because they think this concept is very limited, the authors think that EA could not offer to the company a complete feedback of the knowledge the repatriate worker got overseas and it is because he just focuses on pursue the mandated company's goals, he does not mind neither get a deeper knowledge of the host culture nor develop personal skills that could help him to become a competitive and high qualified worker.

Some repatriate workers have complained about the uncertainty they face when they come back to the company, because they do not find an adequate position to use their new skills, after their return they become less employees and more project partners, this means they require more interaction and exchange of benefits with the company.

The authors suggest that the HRM area should modify its structures and procedures in order to get better benefits from the overseas experiences of their employees. The EA should be seen as a non-linear dynamic and not as a process with predictable effects derived from the HRM policies, so the HRM should left behind the traditional hierarchical careers model and redefine the employment principles in order to encourage the exchange of implicit knowledge and skills. One thing that HRM area should take into account is that nowadays expatriate workers are changing their wishes, for them to be promoted to a higher position in the company is becoming a lesser important issue, they are more interested in enrich their careers through the experiences obtained in the different sectors and companies in which they have worked. Another particular feature is some expatriate workers are interested to have their own business.

As a conclusion I want to highlight an authors' paragraph where they talk about how the HRM should performance:"The focus in HRM must move from, "How do we plan, prepare, and protect our people so that EA doesn't cause them to leave?" to "What are the benefits we seek from this exchange and how do we ensure that we get these benefits?"

The proposed question for this topic is:

1. Explain one of the causes for expatriate assignment failure and provide three recommendations to address it.

The main failure that expatriate assignment presents that the initiative to work abroad comes from the company instead the individual, so it is not a personal choice and the worker does not have the enough motivation either learn different ways of thinking nor explore different cultures.

The suggested actions to improve this situation are:

1. The HRM area should redefine their employment principles and make more flexible the EA selection process in order the employees who undertake this process are really motivated to have this international experience.

2. The HRM should take into account those persons who have had an overseas experience in the recruitment for specific intercultural jobs due to they have different social skills that have been developed in their previous international experiences.

3.Improve the feedback process in order that both the company and the repatriate workers have benefits with this knowledge transmition, the company should assure that relevant information has been transmitted and the repatriate worker becomes a project partner in order to use and take advantage of their new skills.

Photos taken from: http://www.giantexperiences.org/