“However, somewhere between 25and 40 per cent of foreign assignments fail in US transnationals.” (Stonehouse et al, 2000,p.210). In fact, 20% to 48% of expatriates leave their companies within the first year of returning from an international assignment In a Business Horizons survey of 135 repatriated employees, only 39% felt their firm used their newly acquired skills; a meager 29% claimed that the assignments helped their careers. (Hayes et al, 1996).
Such a failure is partly due to the mismatch between the organizational goals and personal goals, which is the main purpose of ED. Other reasons are:
- Lack of training, this includes language and cross culture training. A recent survey conducted by Runzheimer International, found that only 42% of the 54 multinational companies polled had any formal training program for acculturating expatriates with their host country. (Hayes et al, 1996).
- Family-related problems are perhaps the most important cause of failure amongst expatriates (Harvey, 1985). Such family problems include relating to the adaptation of both spouse and children to a new cultural and social environment. (Stonehouse et al, 2000,p.210)
- Inadequate compensation (Stonehouse et al, 2000,p.210)
- Feeling of loss of status resulting from working at the periphery. (Stonehouse et al, 2000,p.210)
- Expatriates are often staying within the circle of the emigrant community, (Hayes et al, 1996) which reduces the chances to communicate with local culture and create a barrier between local people and them.
- With international assignments becoming more commonplace, few companies are implying that there is any career advancement on the horizon for taking one…Many of the who have been on overseas assignments come back and move right back where they were (Hayes et al, 1996) Thus, make the employees think that their career path is stopped or blurred.
In order to provide the employees a smooth international career development path, as well as to create an internationalized employees pool, organizations thus have to design a more systematic ED plan. This plan will include a clear definition of the international assignment, full training of the language and culture, effective expatriate policies, etc.
For those MNCs with various employees come from different backgrounds, because of the culture impact, employees will have different views of career path. For example, in achievement-oriented corporation in western countries, young, promising managers are often sent on challenging assignment to faraway countries, whereas in ascribing cultures, older people, males, highly qualified persons are sent for those independent tasks or specific functions. (Trompenaars et al, 1998)
Thus, organizations have to fully understand the career meaning to all of its employees and develop different career themes.
References
Stonehouse, G., Hamill, J., Campell, D., and Purdie,T., (2000) Global and transnational business: strategy and management, John Wiley&Sons, Ltd., UK
Black, J.S., Gregersen, H., Mendenhall, M and Stroh,.L. (1999) ‘The Strategic Role of Global Assignment’, in Globalizing People Through International Assignments. London: Addison-Wesley. Pp. 1-31
Redman, T. and Wilkinson, A., (2001) Contemporary Human Resource Management, Prentice Hall
Cassandra, H. (1996) “The intrigue of international assignments “ in Black Enterprise, 26(10), pg. 98, NY
Harvey, M.C. (1985) the executive family: an overlooked variable in international assignments, Columbia journal of world business, Spring.
Tromenaars, F. and Turner, C.H (1998) Riding the waves of culture: understanding cultural diversity in business, Nicholas Brealey Publishing Ltd.,London
