Empirical investigations of the host country perspective in expatriate management

Abstract

This chapter aims to remedy the paucity of empirical research on the host country perspective in expatriate management by presenting results from a three-part empirical study. Data were collected from 220 expatriates working in Turkey and one host country national co-worker of each expatriate. The purpose of the first part of the project was to empirically examine factors that host country nationals perceive to contribute to international assignee success. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that five factors adequately explained the data. These factors were: (I) job knowledge and motivation,(2) relational skills,(3) flexibility/adaptability, (4) extra-cultural openness, and (5) family situation. For host country co-workers, the job knowledge and motivation dimension was found to be the most important factor, and the least important factor was family situation. The second part of the study examined the relationships between host country national ratings (HCN ratings) of expatriates on these five broad categories of attributes of success and (a) expatriate adjustment, and (b) intentions to stay in the country of assignment. HCN ratings on the five dimensions of expatriate success attributes correlated moderately but consistently with expatriate adjustment to living abroad and expatriate stay intentions. The third part of our study examined the criterion-related validities of expatriate characteristics for KCN ratings of nine job performance dimensions of as well as for overall job performance. Criterion-related validities of expatriate background variables (e.g. age, experience), adjustment to living abroad, and ethnocentric attitudes were computed. Across different job performance dimensions, adjustment to living abroad emerged as the best correlate of HCN ratings.