Expatriates:
Expatriates are people who have left their home country(s) to live or work abroad on a temporary or permanent basis. This could include people retiring in other countries, and in terms of this report, people who work in other countries after being instructed to do so by the head office.
Knowledge transfer:
Knowledge transfer is the process of learning from a group of experienced employee in the business or in the department. It is, in essence, a training programme, but might be carried out easily; such as when the experienced and the inexperienced both work together and the latter learns just by observing and assimilating.
This simple process also has ethical considerations where there is an imbalance of power or economic state. The transfer within organisations or from one nation to another is therefore to be seriously looked at. A developed country might have difficulty, or might be reluctant altogether, in transferring knowledge to a developing country and her citizens.
Employee development:
This is the act of motivating and encouraging employees to obtain and acquire new and advanced skill sets, new viewpoints and perspectives through learning and training facilities; and enabling them to apply their learning in various avenues.
Literature Review:
The diverse roles of expatriates and its link towards the development of local employees have been addressed from varied perspectives. A review of relevant literature will help me to carry out my research effectively.
According to CIPD, the acceptable reasons for using an expatriate may include :filling a position where there are no local alternatives or suitable candidates, filling a position where no local stuff are qualified enough, training local people and potential, and grooming them to gradually take over the roles from the expatriates, gaining technical expertise, giving employees more experience in the international market as a preparation for more responsible roles, providing opportunities of development and prospect for employees, etc.
According to Sparrow, Brewster and Harris (2004), there are five main strategic reasons for sending employees on International assignment: professional development, Knowledge transfer, transfer of scarce skills, control and co-ordination.
The very important role of expatriates has been variously termed “developer” and “transferor”.
Bennet et al. (2000) used the term “developer” because, according to them, the main purpose is to develop the skills of local employees to international standards.
Kimmo and Vesa (2004) and Torbiorn (1994) labelled this role “transferor”, because the expatriate's role is to transfer knowledge and skills to local employees.
Harzing (1999) and Selmer and de Leon (2002) stated that expatriates playing this role take responsibility not only for transferring technical knowledge and skills, but also for cultivating corporate culture in the subsidiary.
Leach (1994) emphasized that for expatriates to function effectively as transferor, they must transfer appropriate up-to-date knowledge and skills in their current posts and prepare local employees to take over their duties when they leave. The latter requires making certain that local managers can consistently and effectively apply existing practical knowledge and skills to improving planning and organization within the institution, which means that local employees must have some managerial knowledge and skills to begin with. She found that when local employees had poor organizational and managerial skills, expatriates spent most of their time on administrative duties and directing the work of local managers, rather than transferring knowledge and skills to them.
Kimmo and Vesa (2004) suggested that complete knowledge transfer requires expatriates acting as transferor not only to transfer knowledge from headquarters to the subsidiary, but also to transfer knowledge gained from the subsidiary back to headquarters.
Barlett and Ghoshal (1995) noted that expatriates are an important vehicle for knowledge transfer in transnational organizations.
Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, Cardy, (1995) has noted some disadvantages of using expatriate employees – it Increases the foreign-ness in the branch or subsidiary. It could also lead to a high failure rate, low morale and motivation on local management, and also higher transfer costs and salary costs.
Finally, local employees’ management development skills are very important in today’s global context. However, different people have different views and concept about management development. Usually, management development has seen as a planned, formal, and deliberate process.
According to Training Service Agency (197)7, it is a deliberate effort that aims at improving managerial effectiveness through a planed learning process.
According to CIPD, it is a structured process through which managers can learn and consequently improve on their existing set of skills for the company as well as for their own development within the company. The emphasis is given on the word structured because of the fact that mangers can learn (and actually do) everyday in their world from their bosses as well as form their colleagues and subordinates. This learning is not counted as management training. Management development can only be termed as such when it is executed formally.
On the other hand, some see management development as mean of achieving organization performance and competitive advantage in the context of changing environment, such as- Globalization.
Accordingly to Lees (1992) the entire system of corporate activities with the espouse goal of improving the performance of the managerial stock in the Context of organizational and environmental change.
While Buckley and Kemp (1989) said that management development “ensures the right mix of management competencies to secure competitive positioning . . . it is a means to develop management competencies to enable the organization to maintain or shift its competitive position in the future”
According to the above views, we can understand that the importance of the development of the local managers and also that, it is one of the very significant roles of expatriates managers to transfer their skill and knowledge to the local subsidiaries for their performance enhancement.
Research Method
My project is going to rely on primary data, as the expatriation in its form and implementation are relatively new in Bangladesh. Therefore, previous literatures on it are rather insufficient.
Quantitative method will be helpful in comparing and judging the success of the expatriates’ activities in Bangladesh.
Qualitative information cannot be exhaustive by nature. However, we can gain important insight form this method, assisting us in the understanding of the impact on the local managers’ performance. It will also be instrumental in finding out new and more efficient strategies that can be undertaken by expatriates.
The research will be carried out based on primary data. The primary data will be collected through a survey carried out through a standardised questionnaire using mainly semantic scales.This research will use a mixture of closed questions and more open comments in the questionnaire.
Approximately 50 managers (combination of equal number of expatriate managers and local managers) will be selected through random sampling. The 50 managers would be chosen from different MNCs in Bangladesh.
The questionnaire given to expatriate managers will aim to assess their strategies for the development of local managers and the questionnaire given to the local managers will help to measure the effectiveness of these strategies.
The questionnaire will follow the semantic scale with a five-point response scale where the respondents will be given five response choices on a scale of 1 to 5; 1 representing the respondent strongly agreeing to the suggestion, and 5 being the respondent strongly disagreeing with it, and the intermediary responses are represented by the values in between.
However, to gain a proper insight into the effectiveness of the expatriation, equal number of expatriate managers and local managers will also be interviewed (qualitative method) to explore specific areas.
These interviews would be conducted mostly by telephone. By their very nature, telephone interviews will give the easy access to the officials of the different Multi-national Companies. I will also exhaust the personal contact list to gather the information.
The answers from the qualitative research (i.e. open interviews) will form the basis of conclusion and recommendations.
Data Analysis and Presentation
The quantitative research will be done in the form of hypothesis testing through a standard regression model. The model will be created using SPSS.
Data collected from the qualitative research will be abbreviated to highlight only the key points to consider.
The study utilised first hand data that comes from the chosen respondents who answered the survey-questionnaires given to them. First hand data are those that come from the respondents who have been surveyed prior to the research. The study has also utilized secondary data. Secondary data include data that have not been collected form the field, but rather form library and data archives, and they include raw and unprocessed data form surveys, published report and journals and also compilations of different data sources, processed and unprocessed.
In this study, secondary data has been used. These collections of data were obtained from books, various journals, magazines, newspapers and the like. The data encompassed marketing strategies and customer satisfactions as well as relevant literatures and survey-based data in order to meet the objectives of this study. Weighted mean for all of the questions and quantitative data were computed to analyse the data. Weighted mean is like an average of sums, with the weight of the quantities varying according to relevance and importance. In other words, not all quantities receive the same value or importance. Each value is multiplied with its weight, and the products are added and then averaged to obtain the weighted average.
The findings from the surveys are arranged in tables. Interviews and feedbacks have been integrated based on the outline of analysis. Relevant literature reviews that back up the findings are also included.
Validity
Validity of the evaluation tool used for this study has been tested by the researcher by testing the questionnaire among 5 respondents. This can be regarded as a pilot study of sorts, and therefore does not fit into the actual research. The respondents were also asked for feedback, mainly concerning how to fulfil the purpose of the research more effectively through the questions, and that if they need to be amended. The researcher modified the content of the questionnaire based on the assessment and suggestions of the sample respondents. Based on the feedback seemingly irrelevant questions were removed, and vague or difficult terminologies were converted into simpler ones and expressed clearly to make the survey more comprehensive for the selected respondents.
Ethical Considerations
This study required individual participation in a manner that might not be deemed hospitable for the company the individuals work for. Certain issues were addressed therefore. The consideration is deemed important to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the respondents. Identifying these issues was done in a proactive manner, thinking ahead rather than reacting to unforeseen circumstances. The issues included were consent of the respondent, complete confidentiality and data protection where the survey included questions deemed sensitive from the respondent’s point of view.
RESOURCE & SUPPORT
- Books
- Journal & articles
- Research papers
- Internet
- LSBU library & E-sources.
- Other libraries.
- Academic websites.
Timescale:
The Project duration will be 8 months commencing on January, 2008. Stages in the project are indicated in the Gantt chart.
References:
GLOBAL STAFFING
H. Scullion, (2006): Routledge
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE,
M. Dickmann, C. Brewster & P. Sparrow (2008) 2nd Edition: Routledge
EXPATRIATE MANAGEMENT: NEW IDEAS FOR INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
J. Selmer. (1995) Greenwood Publishing Group
EXPATRIATION PRACTICES IN THE GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT,
Grainger, R. J. & Nankervis, A. R. (2001) Available from: http://rphrm.curtin.edu.au/2001/issue2/expat.html
INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS: THE PARTY'S OVER
Source: IRS Employment Review (2002) : IRS
Available from:
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia (2008) [Online] Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Dowling. P J (2008) International Human Resource Management 5th ed. Cengage Learning EMEA.
Deresky, H. (2006) International Management: managing across borders and cultures. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Harzing, A (2004) International Human Resource Management. 2nd ed. SAGE Publications.
Briscoe, D.R; Schuler;. R. S (2004) International Human Resource Management. 2nd ed. Prentice Hall.
Sparrow, P; Brewster, C & Hrris, H (2004) Globalizing Human Resource Management. 1st ed. Routledge.
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