To what extent does the pre-departure training restrict challenges of expatriate employees and how multinational companies provide it to their staffs before an overseas assignment?

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HRM 514 – Assessment 1

Research Question:

To what extent does the pre-departure training restrict challenges of expatriate employees and how multinational companies provide it to their staffs before an overseas assignment?

Introduction

Nowadays, International Human Resource Management (IHRM) is considered to be a critical factor for a success of organizations in the context of globalization and international competitive market environment. Within the IHRM, management of expatriate employees is a primary field. A tendency of globalization offers more opportunities to employees to do business abroad. However, there are many difficulties and challenges for expatriates who want to live and work in the host country such as culture-sock, language barrier or instructional behaviours. Consequently, what can companies do to help their staff to deal with these issues? Pre-departure training seems to be a good answer for this question.

Pre-departure training programs play an important role in Multinational Companies (MNCs). The program provides expatriates with skills and practical knowledge that will help them to overcome difficulties when they work overseas. Many MNCs are successful in their business by sending their employees abroad for pre-departure training while some companies found that it is not really necessary. Thus, pre-departure training programs are really necessary for MNCs or not? The question has been answered by many studies about expatriate training and how companies provide pre-departure training programs to their staffs.

The challenges of expatriation

In the globalization and competitive market environment, business is no longer limited by national boundaries (Ashamalla, 1998). The majority of large corporations over the world perform their business outside their home countries. The employees are required to work in overseas assignments, so they become expatriates. An “expatriate” can be described as an individual who is assigned to work in the country where he or she is not a citizen (Tahir and Ismar, 2007). According to Richardson and Mc Kenna (2002), expatriates are professionals who are living in a foreign location for about one year on a temporary basis. Living and working in a new cultural environment, they have to face many challenges and they need to adjust their lifestyles in order to make their assignment successfully (Ward and Rana-Deuba, 2000; Zakaria, 2000).

The most common difficulties faced by the expatriates are culture-sock and language. The changes happened in sudden cross-culture transitions make expatriates more stressful. For instant, Goodall(2006) found that all the expatriates who live and work in China usually experience some degree of culture sock. Language is the other challenge for the expatriates as they find it’s difficult to communicate with the local people. In addition, depending on the host country, there is other kind of difficulties which expatriates have to deal with. Take Malaysia for an example, the local public services, cleanliness, environmental awareness and restricted local media are the critical issues which foreigners often complain when they stayed in this country (Asma, 1996).

Aycan (1997) found that many expatriates felt the challenges had significantly influenced on their decision to stay in the host country. Moreover, the success of the international assignment is greatly depends on the expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment (Caligiuri, 1997). It takes time, money and effort of expatriates in order to adapt with the new culture and make success in the adjustment. The adjustment process can be displayed as a U-shaped curve, which is divided into four phases. The first phase is considered as a period of enchantment when the expatriate has a lack of communications with locals and gets used to the new culture. This phase can be known as the “honeymoon phase” and it lasts when the expatriate begins his or her day-to-day life (Selmer, 1999). After the “honeymoon phase”, the expatriate is depressed when he or she realizes the difficulties as well as culture sock. Culture sock affects all of expatriates even if they have been on other international assignments before. Some people can pass this phase and stay until the end of assignment while others choose to come back home earlier. The expatriates who passed this phase are referred to the “adjustment phase” (Black and Mendenhall, 1991). They have to find a way to cope with the situation such as learning local language or following the new culture. However, in the adjustment process, there are many feelings and experiences remaining from the culture sock which causes difficulties to clear between two phase. (Grove & Torbiörn, 1985). The last phase is “completion phase”, which appears when the expatriates have done well in their adjustment and are able to adapt with the new environment ((Black & Mendenhall, 1991). When they finish the overseas assignment and come back home, it may be a difficult time for them to readjust to their home countries.

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The second phase is the most important phase in the adjustment process because it impacts the decision of expatriate to stay or leave the host country and it decides the success of assignments. Many expatriate assignments were unsuccessful due to the inability of adjusting to the new environment, especially the adjustment of their spouses (Lau, 2007). According to some studies, there are from 25 per cent to 40 per cent of failure American expatriations, depending on the location assignment (Fortune, 1995). Moreover, some research about the expatriation in Asia found that the expatriate failure rates ranged from 4-15 per ...

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