Expatriate adjustment and commitment: the role of host-unit treatment

This article tests the hypotheses that perceived host ethnocentrism will impact negatively on expatriates' work adjustment, host commitment and parent commitment as well as increase the desire to return early from overseas assignments. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed on survey data from 250 international assignees controlling for a wide range of personal, organizational and locational characteristics. As predicted, perceptions of local ethnocentrism had a negative effect on work adjustment and commitment to the host unit, particularly when cultural distance was low. We also found that European expatriates were more likely to react negatively to perceptions of host ethnocentrism than were their American counterparts. In general, there was no support of the hypothesized links between perceived host ethnocentrism and parent-firm commitment or the desire to return early.     

Expatriate adjustment as a multifaceted phenomenon: individual and organizational level predictors

A conceptual model is proposed that identifies critical antecedents of expatriate adjustment. Adjustment is conceptualized as the degree of fit between the expatriate manager and the environment, both work and socio-cultural. Adjustment is marked by both reduced conflict and increased effectiveness. As a multidimensional phenomenon, expatriate adjustment can be identified in psychological, socio-cultural and work domains. The model predicts that psychological and socio-cultural adjustment are the most immediate predictors of work adjustment. In this paper, it is asserted that the success of the expatriation process depends not only on the expatriate manager's competencies and skills, but also on organizational (both parent-company and local-unit) support and assistance prior to and during the assignment. Various international human resource management models are utilized to examine the organizational level antecedents of expatriate adjustment. Managerial resourcefulness, acculturation attitudes, personality dimensions and coping strategies are discussed in relation to individual predictors, whereas MNCs' international structure, value orientation, organizational life-cycle, diversity training, strategic planning and socialization are proposed as organizational predictors of expatriate adjustment.     

Women abroad: getting the best results from women managers

Abstract This study explores the work environment of expatriate women managers in American corporations and investigates the determinants of their job satisfaction. The strategic importance of global assignments has increased over the years. The real cost of unsuccessful expatriates extends beyond the monetary expenses. As the number of women managers working overseas increases, so does the importance of this topic. Additionally, because women in expatriate positions are relatively new, their needs for job satisfaction and career aspirations are not known to most organizations. This research intends to fill this gap. The study concentrates on four major areas that are considered important for obtaining job satisfaction: (1) the way in which organizations design their overseas jobs, (2) women's skills and characteristics, (3) international human resource policies of companies and (4) the cultural environment of host countries. The applied research covers two phases: a study of expatriate managers during their assignments overseas and the evaluation of overseas experience upon their return. The results indicate that women in overseas assignments are satisfied overall with their jobs. However, organizational variables are more strongly related to job satisfaction. The nature of job design in overseas postings has the greatest impact on women's job satisfaction. When the jobs are enriched, women gain intrinsic rewards and have high job satisfaction. Organizational support also contributes to the satisfaction of women expatriates. Training, mentoring and repatriation preparations have high impact on women's success and satisfaction. Women expatriates are more concerned with their repatriation and future advancement than their present assignments. The findings are important for theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, the achievement and satisfaction of women managers overseas cannot be simplified without taking into account organizational, personal and cultural factors. Practically, companies need to respond to the individual needs of expatriate women managers and then decide on their assignments and their repatriation accordingly.     

Self-regulation and expatriate adjustment: The role of regulatory fit

In this paper, we draw on the construct of regulatory fit in explaining how expatriates manage interactional and work-related discrepancies in diverse cultural contexts. When expatriates go overseas, they are often faced with a set of expectations that are at variance with their home country norms and these differences in expectations generate discrepancies. The emergence of discrepancies in an alien cultural context exacerbates the uncertainties facing the expatriate, though the response to uncertainty varies between expatriates. We posit that expatriates with a promotion-focused self-regulatory system are focused on maximizing gains leading them to manage uncertainty through experimentation whereas expatriates with a prevention-focused self-regulatory system are oriented to minimizing losses leading them to manage uncertainty by persisting with the status-quo. Utilizing insights from motivational science and by linking the self-regulatory processes to the cultural context, we develop a framework and propositions for expatriate adaptation in loose and tight cultures. We present managerial implications of our model and offer guidance for testing the framework.     

Towards a strategic model of employment reform in developing countries: explaining and remedying experience to date

The article argues for the importance of employment reform as a subject for international HRM scholarship. Employment reform has been one of the most significant, but also most neglected, recent initiatives in international HRM. Explanations by the World Bank and IMF for the poorer than expected outcomes of reform to date emphasize the importance of political commitment. They are compared with explanations for the similarly poor outcomes of downsizing in industrialized country organizations, which emphasize strategy, diagnosis, incrementalism and provision for retrenchees. Further clarification is provided by the results of field interviews in Ghana, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda and the UK. The article argues for a strategic approach to employment reform, one based on diagnosis and drawing on HRM expertise. It should take account of process factors in reform, make provision for the 'victims' of reform, loosen the link between employment reform and pay reform, and refine the role of donors in supporting reform. HRM practitioners and scholars have an important contribution to make to developing a new approach.     

Control and co-ordination of Japanese subsidiaries in China: problems of an expatriate-based management system

This paper analyses the international management control (IMC) system that Japanese multinational companies (MNCs) employ to co-ordinate the activities of their subsidiaries in China. It focuses on the role of Japanese expatriates in this IMC system and assesses their performance. In the process, it offers a comprehensive evaluation of the organizational fit of the Japanese IMC model within the current Chinese business environment. Taking Japanese firms as the subject, the analysis identifies areas of incongruity and explains the underlying reasons for problems with expatriate-focused IMC models. In doing so, this paper argues that the Japanese expatriate-based control system in China (as in many other parts of the world) continues to be characterized by an insider-outsider mentality that prevents a real internationalization of overseas operations in the 'transnational' sense.     

Front-line responses to customer orientation programmes: a theoretical and empirical analysis

Programmes designed to strengthen customer orientation among front-line service workers represent one of the most common forms of culture change initiatives within service organizations. Despite their importance to contemporary management theory and practice, we know relatively little about how employees react to interventions of this kind, and why they react as they do. The paper aims to address this gap in the literature. It does this through an analysis of front line reactions to a major customer care initiative in one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK. Using data from a large-scale employee survey carried out in seven stores, we first propose a general typology of employee responses to customer care programmes. We then examine some typical employee profiles associated with the main types of response. The analysis is placed within a wider theoretical context consisting of a critical overview of the main theories which might help explain the nature of general and individual reactions to culture change programmes. To this end, we address and draw upon a variety of literatures and debates linked to various aspects of organization and management, industrial psychology, training and development and critical discourse analysis.     

Expatriate pay satisfaction: the role of organizational inequities,assignment stressors and perceived assignment value

Using equity, stress and buffer theories, we investigate the role played by organizational inequities (organizational justice and provision of benefits) and assignment stressors (work adjustment and role novelty) in predicting expatriate pay satisfaction. We also assess the role of perceived assignment value as an important buffer that moderates the above relationships. With a sample of 78 expatriates from nine nationalities working in Hong Kong, we find that organizational justice and work adjustment are both positively related to expatriate pay satisfaction. We also find that perceived assignment value strengthens the provision of benefits–pay satisfaction and work adjustment–pay satisfaction relationships. Limitations and managerial implications are discussed.     

通货膨胀国际间传导对我国影响的实证检验

本文运用时间序列分析方法,实证检验了欧盟和美国的价格冲击向我国传导的总体效应.实证结果表明,各国物价存在明显的协整关系,脉冲响应分析和方差分解的结论进一步刻画了外国通胀冲击的特征.协整变结构检验证实了近年来通货膨胀国际传导效应显著增强.本文还利用格兰杰因果检验,考察了通货膨胀的各条跨国传导路径,研究发现,消费品和原材料价格传导路径非常通畅,而通过国际储备影响货币供应量的传导渠道,以及总供给-总需求传导渠道不能得到实证支持.     

Managing the transfer of capabilities within multinational corporations:: the dual role of the subsidiary

In this article, the relation is explored between the external technical embeddedness of the subsidiary, its assigned role, and capability development in the MNC. It is argued that assigning roles of responsibility or mandates to certain subsidiaries can effect integration of subsidiary-developed knowledge in the MNC. Departing from literature on the market-as-networks perspective and writings from recent years on subsidiary roles, hypotheses are developed and a model outlined. The model describes a significant link between the external technical embeddedness of the subsidiary and its assigned role within the MNC, and a significant relation between the subsidiary's assigned role and its importance for other units’ capability development. The model is tested on a sample of 97 subsidiaries using the LISREL 8.3 statistical method. The final model implies that by assigning specific roles to different subsidiaries, headquarters can exploit the knowledge developed in the external environments of these subsidiaries.     

Job analysis: a strategic human resource management practice

This study examined the impact of job analysis on organizational performance among 148 companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Gulf-region country. Survey results indicated that a practice of proactive job analysis was strongly related to organizational performance. This relationship was strongest to the extent that companies maintained HR information systems, accorded HR greater involvement in strategic planning and emphasized competency-based characteristics of employees in the job analysis approaches they used. The findings suggest that a company-wide policy of job analysis is an important source of competitive advantage in its own right, and merits due attention of HR professionals, line managers and top management. The study extends the findings of the HR–performance research pursued in Western countries to a non-Western context.     

Psychological barriers to adjustment and how they affect coping strategies: Western business expatriates in China

Business expatriates currently assigned to the Chinese mainland, mainly from the USA, France, Germany, Australia and Great Britain participated in a survey examining two sets of psychological barriers to adjustment and their association with problem-focused and symptom-focused coping strategies. As presumed, there is a negative relationship between expatriates' perceived inability to adjust and problem-focused coping, while this psychological barrier had no significant association with symptom-focused coping. Unwillingness to adjust has a negative relationship with only one of the problem-focused coping variables, social involvement with host country nationals, whereas the same psychological barrier correlated only negatively with parent-country escapism of the symptom-focused strategies. Implications for Western business expatriates on the Chinese mainland and for their assigning companies are discussed as well as possible avenues for further research.     

Strengthening the weak link in strategic executive development: Integrating individual development and global business strategy

The global business environment of the 1990s provides both challenge and opportunity to human resource development to become an integral player in helping implement business strategy. The results of two best practice studies suggest that some leading firms such as 3M and Motorola are doing just that. At these companies current strategic business issues are the drivers of flexible and opportunistic executive development activities. Naturally occurring on-the-job experiences are consciously utilized in such a way that helping executives to develop becomes an integral part of conducting business. The implications of linking executive development to business strategy for practice and for future research are discussed. © 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Impact of nationality composition in foreign subsidiary on its performance: a case of Korean companies

This study explores how the nationality compositions of management teams and employee groups in foreign subsidiaries can affect subsidiary performance. By analyzing firm-level data on 401 South Korean subsidiaries across 35 countries in the period between 2005 and 2007, we found that balanced compositions in both subsidiary management teams (SMTs) and subsidiary employee groups (SEGs) were positively associated with subsidiary performance. The results suggest that the benefits of balanced composition are higher for both innovative and coordinative tasks conducted by management teams and for simple computational tasks conducted by employee groups. The effect of the SMT and SEG compositions on subsidiary performance, however, may depend on the host country's institutional conditions. These findings have practical implications for multinational staffing strategies in order to ensure high performance in subsidiaries and for host country policies used to attract high quality foreign direct investments.     

发展都市旅游业的先决条件与战略模式

都市旅游业是城市发展的重要战略之一。发展都市旅游业当然要突破过去“就资源论开发”的传统思想误区 ,但还是要具备一定的基本的先决条件。因此应该因地制宜地采取相应的发展战略。在实际操作过程中 ,还应该注意可持续发展、投资负担合理安排以及市场营销等方面的问题。     

国际新创企业海外创业机会识别与开发

国际新创企业作为一种新型的创业形式和国际企业组织类型,对传统的国际化理论提出了挑战。本文基于国际创业的视角,从创业机会的角度来探讨国际新创企业创立与成长问题,揭示了国际新创企业创业机会的来源以及企业家机会识别与开发过程及其影响因素。     

Technical efficiency in farming: a meta-regression analysis

A meta-regression analysis including 167 farm level technical efficiency (TE) studies of developing and developed countries was undertaken. The econometric results suggest that stochastic frontier models generate lower mean TE (MTE) estimates than non-parametric deterministic models, while parametric deterministic frontier models yield lower estimates than the stochastic approach. The primal approach is the most common technological representation. In addition, frontier models based on cross-sectional data produce lower estimates than those based on panel data whereas the relationship between functional form and MTE is inconclusive. On average, studies for animal production show a higher MTE than crop farming. The results also suggest that the studies for countries in Western Europe and Oceania present, on average, the highest levels of MTE among all regions after accounting for various methodological features. In contrast, studies for Eastern European countries exhibit the lowest estimate followed by those from Asian, African, Latin American, and North American countries. Additional analysis reveals that MTEs are positively and significantly related to the average income of the countries in the data set but this pattern is broken by the upper middle income group which displays the lowest MTE.

Normative commitment in the workplace: A theoretical analysis and re-conceptualization

Among the components of the Meyer and Allen's [Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1, 64?89] three-component model of organizational commitment, normative commitment (NC) has received the least attention. It is sometimes dismissed as a redundant construct that bears many similarities to affective commitment and does not explain work behaviors beyond other components. In this review, we seek to re-establish the theoretical and practical significance of NC. We argue that NC has a dual nature and that it manifests itself differently depending on the strength of other components in an employee's commitment profile. NC can be experienced either as a moral duty or a sense of indebtedness, each having different implications for work behavior. Drawing on theories of perceived organizational support, motivation, psychological contracts, leadership, and culture, the paper justifies the distinction between two “faces” of NC, delineates organizational factors that could promote a more positive interpretation of NC, and proposes an agenda for future research.