Example Of Expatriate Expectations Essay

Expatriate is a person residing in another country on a permanent or temporally basis. This word is mainly used to refer to a skilled or a professional worker sent by his company to another country with the purpose of working there. The work involved is mainly for a short period of two to five years. Expatriates should not be confused with immigrants, Even though migrants mainly move in another country with the main purpose of seeking for employment, some of the are also skilled but they are not always in the other countries as a representative of a given organization or company. Sometimes it can be also confusing when it comes to the immigrants, the usage of the word expatriate always varies. This is to say, the migrants are always perceived as expatriates by the people from their motherland country while in the country they are working they are always referred to as migrant workers (Rao, 2008).
Most people who are internationally assigned are always paid high salaries and monitory benefits such as; hardship and cost of living allowance, which go hand in hand with non-monetary incentives such as education expenses, health care and housing expenses. Some companies go to an extend of taking care of the education for the expatriates children at an expensive international school and also compensate the spouse for the loss of job. However, small companies may always ask the expatriate to find a local school for their children, to determine what benefit an organization gives to the expatriate is always determined by the three approaches. These approaches are mainly the approach of the international head quarter, based on the destination and finally the balance sheet approach. The disadvantages of expatriate includes, the chances of encountering restriction from the local government, the possibility of facing the challenge of adopting to a foreign environment and high cost of transfer. Company also faces the expatriates’ premature return due to poor retention and failed assignments which mainly due to failed repatriation (Bonache, 2006).
The reason behind the failure of expatriate is for example; lack of adjustment of cross culture by the expatriates and expatriate premature return this failure are always related the expatriates family or spouse and poor performance that mainly occur during international assignment. Research has it that some of the expatriate return to their country permanently due to cultural shock impact or because they are not satisfied with their job and some who completed their period did not reach the expectation of the organization. Furthermore, when the assignment of the company is not completed, the failure cost affects the company both indirect and direct. The direct cost includes, training cost, salary, and relocation and travel expenses while the indirect cost is difficulties with the government hosting the expatriate on the need to replace the expatriate with host country citizen and also loss of market share (Chew, 2004).
Failure of the expatriate is mainly caused by the error incurred during the selection process this is due to the Human Resource neglecting other interpersonal factors that are important and focusing only on technical competence while selecting expatriates. The interpersonal skills assist the expatriate to culturally adjust and his or her family must always be considered. For a successful expatriate, the Human Resource should always consider; technical ability, cultural empathy, managerial skills, adaptability, language ability, diplomacy, positive attitude, maturity, adaptability of family and emotional stability (Birdseye & Hill,1995).

Reference

Rao, P. L. (2008). International human resource management: Text and cases. New Delhi: Excel Books. Page 138.
Bonache, J. (2006). The compensation of expatriates: A review and a future research agenda. Handbook of research in international human resource management, 158-175.
Chew, J. (2004). Managing MNC expatriates through crises: A challenge for international human resource management. Research and Practice in Human Resource Management, 12(2), 1-30.
Birdseye, M. G., & Hill, J. S. (1995). Individual, organizational/work and environmental influences on expatriate turnover tendencies: An empirical study. Journal of International Business Studies, 787-813.