Expat

I. INTRODUCTION

The internationalisation of capital by Transnational Corporations(TNCs) has led to significant changes in the organisation of production and labour. TNCs have been the main vehicles of globalisation. This phenomenon has forced organizations to devote more resources and efforts towards grooming their employees for global assignments. Therefore, the need for global managers is growing in recent times. In order to meet this demand HRM has gone beyond national borders, now called International HRM (IHRM). One of the major tasks that IHRM has relates to the field of Expatriation.

Expatriation is not a new concept, in the early modern era of expatriation after World War II, businesses were usually driven by international divisions that supervised the export issues, licensing and subsidiaries abroad. The main role of corporate human resource department was to make it easier to select staff for foreign postings, to find employees that were familiar with the activities and products of the company, organization, culture and also at the same time comfortable with working abroad (Evans, Pucik & Barsoux, 2002). But with the changing corporate dynamics, there has been ample research done in this area. The literature on the movement of managers across national boundaries mostly focuses on issues relating to dual-career families, stress and failure levels amongst the highly mobile. Others, approach the subject from a gender-specific perspective concentrating on the under-representation of women on international assignments; or discuss expatriate labour from an organisational, cultural and international business development viewpoint with emphasis on Human Resource management.

i. Definition

The health of today’s multinational companies depends on the International Human Resource Management’s ability to match the firms’ workforce forecast with the supply of global talent. Therefore, one can ask the question, who is an expatriate specifically?...