How host organizations prepare for and learn from expatriate assignments

Autor: Snejina Michailova, Anthony Fee
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Thunderbird International Business Review. 62:329-342
ISSN: 1520-6874
1096-4762
DOI: 10.1002/tie.22099
Popis: © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This article reveals what goes on inside host organizations prior to and during expatriate assignments. On the basis of analyzing organizational documents and conducting 43 interviews with host country nationals (HCNs) and expatriates in 30 Vietnamese organizations that host external foreign assignments, we provide a detailed account of HCNs' experiences and unearth sophisticated preparation and management activities designed to maximize these organizations' learning. We depict what we call “a host organization lifecycle” and extract five lessons: (a) host organizations prepare carefully in advance to learn as much as possible from expatriates; (b) HCNs experience quite dramatic adjustments and burdens during expatriates' placements; (c) mutual trust between expatriates and HCNs is a prerequisite for HCNs' learning; (d) most of HCNs' learning occurs informally via interactions with expatriates or observing how they work; (e) host organization managers actively manage HCN–expatriate relationships. Our findings outline a “wish list” of practices that expatriate-using organizations could consider deploying for expatriate assignments that focus on the benefit of the host organization' development.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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