of success for expatriate managers: job factors, relational dimensions such as cultural empathy and flexibility, motivational state, family situation, and language skills. The relative importance of each factor is highly situational and difficult to establish.16
These expatriate success factors are based on studies of American expatriates. One could argue that the requisite skills are the same for managers from any country - and particularly so for third-country nationals.
A more flexible approach to maximizing managerial talent, regardless of the source, would certainly consider more closely whether the position could be suitably filled by a host-country national, as put forth by Tung, based on her research. 17 This contingency model of selection and training depends on the variables of the particular assignment, such as the length of stay, the similarity with the candidate's own culture, and the level of interaction with local managers in that job. Tung concludes that the more rigorous the selection and training process, the lower the failure rate.
The selection process is set up as a decision tree in which the progression to the next stage of selection or the type of orientation training depends on the assessment of critical factors regarding the job or the candidate at each decision point. The simplest selection process involves choosing a local national, because minimal training is necessary, regarding the culture or ways of doing business locally. However, local managers often require additional training regarding the MMC's companywide processes, technology and corporate culture to be successful. If the position cannot be filled by a local national, but yet the job requires a high level of interaction with the local community, there needs to be a very careful screening of candidates from other countries and a vigorous training program.
Most MNCs tend to start out their operations in a particular region by selecting primarily from their own pool of managers. Over time, and with increasing internationalization, they tend to move to a predominantly polycentric or regiocentric policy because of (1. increasing pressure (explicit or implicit) from local governments to hire locals (or sometimes legal restraints on the use of expatriates), and (2. the greater costs of expatriate staffing, particularly when the company has to pay taxes for the parent-company employee in both countries. 18 In addition, in recent years, MNCs have noted an improvement in the level of managerial and technical competence in many countries, negating the chief reason for using a primarily ethnocentric policy in the past. One researcher's comment represents a growing attitude: “All things being equal, a local national who speaks the language, understands the culture and the political system, and is often a member of the local elite, should be more effective than an expatriate alien.”19 However, concerns about the need to maintain strategic control over subsidiaries and to develop managers with a global perspective remain a source of debate about staffing policies among human resource management professionals.2 A globally oriented company such as AI3B (Alsea Brown Boveri), for example, has 500 roving transpatriates who are moved every two to three years, thus developing a considerable management cadre with global experience.
For MNCs based in Europe and Asia, human resource policies at all levels of the organization are greatly influenced by the home-country culture and policies. For Japanese subsidiaries in Singapore, Malaysia, and India, for example, promotion from within and expectations of long-term loyalty to and by the firm are culture-based practices transferable to subsidiaries. At Matsushita, however, selection criteria for staffing seem to be similar to those of Western companies. Its candidates are selected on the basis of a set of characteristics the firm calls SMILE:
specialty (required skill, knowledge), management ability (particularly motivational ability), international flexibility (adaptability), language facility, and endeavor (perseverance in the face of difficulty).
Exhibit 9-3B : Developing a Global Management Cadre article from Global Human Resource Management Catagory Exhibit 9-3B
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