Dowling festing and engle 2013

Running head: International Assignments 1

International Assignments 11

International Assignments

Naomia Curtis

BUS325

Prof.. Jeanette Horner-Smith

Strayer University

February 26, 2015

International Assignments

In many cases, recommendations provided for pre-departure training for expatriates going to international duties mainly focus on culture and language. It is unfortunate that many MNEs neglect language training, which is imperative and needs to be part of expatriates’ preparation for international assignments. It is important to take into consideration the information and advice that returning expatriates bring. The information and guidance are important during the design of a pre-departure training program for employees that a company wants to send for expatriate assignments (Dowling. Festing & Engle, 2013). It is important that a multi-national enterprise selects appropriate employees who are open-minded, patient, capable, flexible, motivated, and can quickly adapt to new conditions (Caligiuri, 1997).

During the design of a pre-departure training program, training managers should assess the level of interaction that the expatriates will have with the host country population. Furthermore, it is important to evaluate the challenge of the new position and its duties during the design of a pre-departure training program. According to Caligiuri (1997), the way other countries conduct business is different from Western countries’ business ethics, which is something that important that expatriates need to understand. As such, a pre-departure training should cover the following components:

· A host country’s political history should be included in the pre-departure training to provide expatriates a better insight about the host country’s political business environment

· Critical incidents, role plays, and actual expatriate cases based on expatriate working and living experiences

· The host country’s language, especially key phrases should be covered

· Pre-departure training should cover negotiation skills

· Understanding mixed messages and non-verbal cues of host country language and communication components should be included in the pre-departure training

· Pre-departure training should include family or spouses as important elements to an expatriate’s foreign assignment stay and success

Although certain literature consider the significance of cross-culture components in pre-departure training as ambiguous, the coverage of these components in a pre-departure training is crucial to a multinational enterprise, the expatriate, and the expatriate’s family in addition to the success of the assignment (Caligiuri, 1997). Cultural and business ethics are significantly diverse between one country to another. As such, a good understanding of working and living environment should be gained by expatriates to help them in adjusting to their new environment. When a company covers and provides a clear view of what the expatriates should expect in their new assignments, culture shock and the possibility of failure of expatriate assignment will be significantly reduced (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

Currently, global assignments are increasingly emerging as crucial for both an organizations’ global success and individuals’ career. As such, having an effective and systematic means of measuring expatriate performance has significantly increased in importance. Global human resource professionals are in agreement that it is important for multinational enterprises to attract, choose, and retain individuals who have a global orientation and competence (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013). Studies of expatriate success have identified three criteria that can be used by management to assess the performance of expatriates working abroad. These include:

· Completion of international assignment

· Cross-cultural adjustment during foreign assignment

· Performance on the international assignment

The completion of international assignment criterion is a basic behavioral measure that management uses to assess the performance of the expatriate assignment. According to this criterion, success happens when expatriates stay in the host country for the entire intended period of the assignment. According to the cross-cultural adjustment approach that is used to assess the performance of expatriate assignment, performance can be determined by assess how expatriates are psychologically comfortable with the foreign living and working environment while conducting their abroad assignments (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

This construct notes that expatriates who are cross-culturally adjusted are open to the culture of the host country, represent an integrative approach to a foreign or new culture, and integrate new norms, behavior, and roles in the foundation that their home culture provides. Expatriates who are cross-cultural maladjusted are unable to accept and adjust to the new culture because they perceive the culture of the host country as inferior to their own. Maladjusted expatriates further tend to exhibit signs of emotional stress like homesickness and depression (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

Many multinational enterprises who send their employees to abroad assignments want these employees to become cross-cultural and remain in their abroad jobs until the assignment duration ends. Apart from these criteria, multinational enterprises want their expatriate employees to conduct their foreign assignments successful while they are abroad (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

For many multinational enterprises, sending their employees abroad for foreign assignments for one or more years to develop their international competencies are inconsistent with their company’s overall strategic human resource plan. During these abroad assignments, a lot of expatriates find international assignments as developmental experiences. Many report having acquired tangible skills that add value to their organizations. Studies on expatriate experience report that 90 per cent of expatriates report increased global perspectives, while 85 per cent reported developed communication skills that enabled them to communicate effectively with individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013). These reports indicate that sending expatriates to foreign assignments improved an organization’s performance by developing global competencies.

Developing appropriate selection criteria is a critical international human resource management issue. Selection of employees is a two-way process between an organization and the individual. When recruiting and selecting candidates for international assignments, firms should consider individual and situational factors or reasons that may make a candidate to reject an expatriate assignment. For example, a selected candidate may turn down an expatriate assignment either for situational factors, such as perceived challenges by a given culture or individual reasons, such as family issues. These challenges give those given the task of selecting candidates for foreign assignments a task of determining appropriate selection criteria. The recruiting and selection strategy that I would recommend being used in my firm when offering international assignments would consider individual factors and include technical ability, cross-cultural suitability, and family requirements. Strategies that would take into consideration situation factors would include country or cultural requirements, language, and multinational enterprise requirements (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

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I. Individual factors

a. Technical ability: - managerial and technical skills would serve as the essential criterion for the recruitment and selection of candidates for expatriate assignments. The recruitment and selection team should consider a candidate’s ability to perform the required expatriate tasks before recruiting and selecting that individual.

b. Cross-cultural suitability: - management should consider an individual with cross-cultural abilities that will enable that candidate to operate well in his or her new environment. Management should consider aspects of a candidate’s personality, ability to relate to individuals from diverse culture, adaptability, emotional stability, and positive attitude towards foreigners.

c. Family requirement: - management should consider the contribution that the family would have on the success of oversea assignment. Assessment should consider the interaction between the expatriate, partner/spouse, and family members to adjustment experience in terms of how it will affect the expatriates performance in foreign assignments.

II. Situational factors

a. Country/cultural requirements: - it is important that the firm considers host government requirements of employment which will make it easier to facilitate employment-related immigration. Considering host country’s requirements will enable a firm to obtain its target number of PCN visas before launching its expatriate business assignment.

b. Multinational enterprise requirements: - situational factors that a firm should consider include the amount of knowledge transfer, mode of operation that will be involved, and duration of foreign assignment. A firm should consider the proportion of its expatriate staff to local employee when making recruitment and selection decisions.

c. Language: - ability to speak a local language can be linked to cross-cultural ability. It is an important situation-determined component for a firm that is selecting candidates for foreign assignment. Language difference is identified as a major barrier to effective cross-cultural communication. Ability to speak a host country’s language is important because it influences an expatriate’s performance irrespective of the level of position. Language is also an important element of consideration during selection decision making process for firms that have a common corporate language as a strategy of standardizing procedures, and reporting systems.

There are various staffing approaches that multinational firms can use for foreign operations. Two staffing alternatives for foreign operations that can be applied in my firm include the ethnocentric staffing approach and the polycentric staffing approach.

According to the ethnocentric staffing approach, nationals from the parent-country of the company are employed to fill important managerial position under the argument that they are familiar with the parent company’s policies, goals, procedures, products, and technology. Supporters of this approach argue that it places the employees in a better position to report to an organization in cases when managerial skills are inadequate at the local level (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

The polycentric staffing approach hires host country nationals to fill the company’s key managerial positions. This staffing approach is best suitable for my firm that has various expatriate business assignments worldwide. The approach enables the company to act local, which makes people inside and outside the firm to readily accept the system. In addition, the company benefits from the approach because it is less expensive to employ locals who are better instrumental in handling business problems as they emerge (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013).

A high-quality mentoring system for international administrators seeks to assist international assignees to adapt successfully to their new environment and at the same time keeping them updated and in touch with the parent country and prepare them for other assignments and repatriation. A high-quality mentor program keeps an assignee up to date with a firm’s promotional opportunities, structural changes, and company knowledge. It also speeds up the integration process in a new work role or organization (Cowell, 2004).

Typically, a high-quality mentoring system for international assignees helps assignees to make the best use of their strengths to realize maximum advantage or benefit from the foreign assignment experience (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013). For example, to ensure that a mentoring system is successful it is imperative that the mentors ensure that they maintain contact with the international assignees throughout the foreign assignment, ensure that international assignees are updated about developments in the home country, expatriates are retained in management developmental programs, and expatriates are assisted during the repatriation process and help them with a repatriation position (Cowell, 2004). This type of mentoring program will not be difficult to implement provided that it is informal, and a multinational company provides the commitment that it requires, which will make the international to welcome it in addition to becoming future mentors.

Assigning a monetary amount to the value of a foreign assignment is identified as the greatest return-on-investment challenge that faces multinational companies today. This challenge arises from the fact that many consultants and companies continue to struggle with developing a standard and systematic process to facilitate with calculating the return-on-investment value.

To measure return on investment (ROI) for international assignments, both financial ROI and non-financial ROI measures should be identified. Financial ROI measures should include the overall growth of the business, assessment of profits, and revenues. Non-financial measures of ROI should include assessment of operational qualities like expansion of business network and customer satisfaction; management and leadership capabilities; and staffing assessment, which include career development, people management, developing relationships, and grooming of successors (Solomon, 1997).

Measuring return on investment for international assignments should start by identifying the goals and objectives that the management set that the international assignees were supposed to achieve. Next, human resource management team should develop effective systems that the company would use to measure the value in addition to instruments that will monitor and measure the assignees performance (Dowling, Festing & Engle, 2013). Lastly, it is important to develop systems that would track both long-term and short-term expenses as well as hidden costs to get a clear picture of cost. Therefore, these will provide a complete picture of performance that can be measured to get the return on the investment for international assignment (Solomon, 1997).

References

Caligiuri, P. M. (1997). Assessing expatriate success: Beyond just "being there" New Approaches to Employee Management, 4, 117-140. Retrieved February 23, 2015, from https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact =8&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http://smlr.rutgers.edu/assessing-expatriate-success-beyond- just-being-there&ei=vyzuVPL7NObU7AaggIGIDQ&usg=AFQjCNEOmym7dyoFQ- TOj_C30kGnUgUFSw&sig2=EWP

Cowell, P. (2004, August 11). Mentoring: A step towards successful repatriation. Retrieved February 23, 2015, from

http://www.expatica.com/hr/hr-mobility/Mentoring-a-step-towards-successful- repatriation_20330.html

Dowling, P. J., Festing, M., & Engle, A. D., Sr. (2013). International human resource management (6th ed.). United Kingdom: Cengage Learning EMEA.

Solomon, C. M. (1997). Return on investment what are your international assignments worth. Global Workforce, 2(4), 12-18. Retrieved February 23, 2015, from http://www.workforce.com/articles/return-on-investment-what-are-your-international- assignments-worth