INTRODUCTION
There has been a widespread use of expatriates in staffing a firms international operations as the paper implies the difficulties to encounter in this strategy and the things to be done to manage such difficulties within multinational companies (MNC’s) relating to the process of expatriation in staffing and reviews the current state of research into expatriation, focusing on the critical issues of strategy, selection and compensation, performance management, repatriation and career management. Expatriation can be regarded as a specific way for multinational corporations (MNC’s) to organize the process of environmental scanning and to provide opportunities for further internal information processing. This contribution develops the concept of organizational international career logics as a theoretical construct to describe expatriation patterns in MNC’s. This will have discussion about expatriates as the process of generating information through expatriates and its further informational processing within MNC’s will be discussed and analyzed from a theoretical perspective. There considers recent research on the multinational corporation (MNC), the need for control and coordination has driven the move toward language standardization, in the form of a common corporate language, with widespread effects on management processes regarding the functioning of the MNC, with potentially important implications for management. Research on multinational corporation (MNC) knowledge transfer has argued continuously for the behavior of knowledge senders to be a determinant of knowledge transfer. Using the context of expatriation, suggests that MNC’s may apply different mechanisms depending on whether they want to develop expatriates' ability or willingness to transfer knowledge. Suggests that MNC’s may enhance expatriates' willingness to transfer knowledge through the employment of long-term expatriate assignments, whereas expatriates' ability to transfer knowledge may increase through involvement in assignments such as short-term assignments and international commuting (2002;1996).
RATIONALE
This sets out to identify possible new developments in the use of expatriate personnel among international firms. According to the perspective applied, personnel is parameter among various means to fill the general managerial tasks of control, coordination and the use of know-how for operative ends. Furthermore, staffing regarding the use of expatriate personnel is taken not to follow deliberate and coherent corporate strategies. Such a model can reasonably well explain traditional staffing patterns among Western European firms (1982). Thus, multinational companies rely more on nonpersonal parameters than other firms and use fewer parent-country nationals (PCNs) in international activities (1988). In addition, there addresses the gap by examining how different types of expatriation assignments influence the knowledge-sharing behavior of expatriates and thereby enhance the degree of knowledge transfer to subsidiaries. ( 1995). There were variety of approaches to the development of expatriates in developed innovative programs as three approaches are emerging for HR managers who work in the international HR area are: (1) In-Country, Real-Time Training (2) Global Mindset Training (3) CD-ROM/Internet-based Training. Staffing patterns should emerge in response to perceived functional needs of control, coordination and know-how transfer within firms and that staffing decisions that do not deal explicitly with such concepts as coordination may not reflect operative conditions in turn influence perception of such needs ( 1983; 1982). While global organizations are thus likely to reduce expatriate personnel at operative levels, but to increase, for coordinative purposes, the use of expatriates in strategic functions ( 1988). Comparing MNCs with matched national firms, he found that norms adhering to national culture were more pronounced in the MNCs.
Among MNCs, competition increasingly becomes a matter of use and transfer of company-specific information and knowledge ( 1991). This development has an impact upon company use of expatriate personnel in that volume increases naturally with greater international activity and control of operations may hold back willingness to invest. The buildup of modern production and day-to-day operations may need to be staffed by expatriates for considerable time due to local shortages of general know-how and possible outcomes as regards the use of expatriate personnel arising from the changing conditions of international activities.
REASONS AND COSTS FOR EXPATRIATE FAILURE
Staffing of expatriates may be affected by several tendencies in international business (1991) developments should alert company concern about strategic considerations as regards the staffing of international operations and about the systematic buildup of competence for strategic roles. Selecting the best-suited people for an assignment is emphasized because of the high costs associated with expatriation (1999). The aim of intercultural preparation is to enable employees to overcome individual culture shocks more easily and to take and implement efficient decisions rapidly in a different cultural surrounding by creating realistic expectations. In order to make the best possible use of investment, companies should also draw on the knowledge potential of their repatriates. The situation of repatriates in the parent company after time abroad has been the subject of scientific research ( 2000;2000; 2001).
There are no estimates yet on what losses companies face when returned expatriates leave their job to work with a competing firm. The resource-based view of the firm by (1991) offers a view on how to value the knowledge of returned expatriates. In order to use knowledge as a resource for competitive advantage, a company first needs to assess the knowledge it has available within its boundaries. The current study attempts to gather and systematize the knowledge components of returned expatriates and to assess what parts of the gathered knowledge could be passed on to colleagues or applied to the company's benefit. ( 1998) Expatriates play an important role in transferring knowledge to operations and establishing policies in subsidiaries ( 2001) and can transfer knowledge back to the company's home base. If MNC’s fail to reintegrate their expatriates who leave the firm after return, their valuable knowledge can be transferred to competitors and used against the original firm, the argument of using expatriates to transfer knowledge to the subsidiary is widely described and it is normally the reason for expatriate assignments within companies, the transfer back of intercultural knowledge the importance of knowledge gained by expatriates abroad and transferred back to the mother company (2000; 2000;2001). The multinational based corporations (MNC’s) appear to be plagued by high failure rates of expatriate managers, like leaving the company, early return to domestic organization, performance during expatriation significantly below expectations (1992;1994). The turnover of expatriate managers have explicit as well as implicit costs associated with the managers' return to the domestic market. The direct cost of training, relocating, and compensating expatriate managers is estimated to be three times as high as their domestic counterparts ( 1992; 1992) as the implicit cost of an expatriate manager's failure may be greater due to the reduced service level to customers in foreign markets, lost customers, and the disproportionate time that human resource managers must spend with "failing" expatriates.
While there have been a multitude of explanations advanced for the high failure rate of expatriates, e.g., lack of training, inadequate selection criteria, ineffective compensation programs, ineffectual leadership and the like, none may be more significant than the impact of the spouse/family on the expatriate manager (1991;1992; 1994). Many MNCs appear to not consider the spouse/family as an important consideration, in that they do not interview them during the selection process and frequently do not include them in formal training programs (1991). If MNCs wish to take advantage of the career development aspects of international assignments and the benefits to the organization of the use of expatriate managers in foreign assignments, human resource managers must consider the potentially disastrous consequences of international transfers to both partners in dual-career couples ( 1991). In dealing with the complexities caused by the interplay of formal and informal coordination mechanisms, MNC’s rely heavily on expatriation. Traditionally, expatriation has been associated with an ethnocentric approach and indicated the practice of using parent-country nationals for staffing key positions in foreign-owned subsidiaries. Consequently, the primary goal of expatriation was explicit and well-defined control and coordination: by relocating expatriates, parent organizations have been able to exert control and achieve global integration across subsidiaries (1993; 2002). Today, expatriates are expected to engage in local staff development and support skills transfer. Research reveals various possible strategic targets for expatriates includes developing top talent and future leaders of the company, improving the trust/commitment of the subsidiary, training local employees in order to improve their individual and team skills, implementing knowledge practices, developing, sharing, and transferring best practices, and developing international leadership (1997; 2003).
The knowledge-related function of expatriates is complementary to the traditional function of coordination and control. Although the failure rate of expatriate assignments may be overestimated (1995, 2002), they are often deemed unsuccessful (1992; 1998), resulting in considerable costs for MNCs (1992). Indirect costs for individuals are even higher, but more difficult to quantify. Reasons for the failure of assignments include various family issues, managers' inability to adjust, the level of managers' personal and emotional maturity, and the inability to cope with greater overseas responsibility (1990; 1995).
EXPATRIATE SELECTION
(2000) noted that under the control and coordination function the expatriate works to align the operations of the unit with those of the parent organization, while the complementary knowledge function requires the expatriate to transfer the parent company's knowledge to the foreign subsidiary under conditions where the parent has greater proprietary knowledge. Indeed, the role of expatriates as vehicles for disseminating knowledge across MNC units has emerged as a new area of inquiry in the international human resource management (HRM) literature and organizational practices of expatriation (selection, training, repatriation) have become a subject of recent academic debate (1999;2000; 2000; 2001).
In particular, focusing organizational efforts on selection criteria: managerial skills, adaptability, diplomacy, positive attitude, maturity, etc., pre-assignment training: language ability, cultural literacy, technical ability, dual career opportunities, flexible organizational approaches to expatriation, career development programs, and new ways of utilizing the international experience are recommended. Recently, MNC’s have begun to consider both host-country nationals and third-country nationals for expatriate assignments, allowing a more comprehensive search for the best-qualified candidate, regardless of his or her nationality. Changes in the expatriate profile and increasing awareness of relocation challenges for international managers and their families lead organizations to experiment with alternative forms of expatriate assignments ( 2002;2002; 2003). Developing organizational capabilities by sharing and integrating different aspects of a multiunit firm's knowledge is an important source of competitive advantage, especially because such intra-organizational firm-specific knowledge sharing and combination is extremely hard for others to imitate (1995;1996). Sharing of knowledge across boundaries organizational, institutional, or social poses a special challenge, as it is more likely that knowledge sharing needs to span different bodies of knowledge since individuals on each side of the transfer are less likely to possess highly overlapping knowledge (2003). Efficient knowledge sharing demands a collaborative effort, implying that it is not only dependent on the recipients' absorptive capacity ( 1990) but also very much on the knowledge sender's attitudes and behavior (2003).
Expatriates on temporary assignments (short-term assignment, international commuters, and frequent flyers) are sent on a temporary basis to different locations to work with local employees to help them solve particular operational problems. These expatriates are frequent visitors to different units of MNCs. For example, highly mobile teams of experts troubleshooters are often sent on short-term assignments (2002). These expatriates also enhance their own competencies by extracting the best solutions from different locations; they increase their individual understanding and vision of international operations; they continuously increase their skills and develop their competencies; they improve their language abilities, and learn how to communicate in different cultures. Expatriates employed on long-term assignments are permanently stationed at the foreign-based subsidiary. They experience high autonomy and role discretion (1982). The greater an individual's discretion as to what work is carried out, how it is done and by whom, the greater the sense of responsibility the individual tends to feel for these decisions and the greater commitment an expatriate exhibits (1992). According to (2000), it seems logical that task autonomy, which is similar to role discretion, should lead to greater satisfaction, since the expatriate manager has the freedom to modify the role to fit his abilities. Organizational commitment originally focused on an individual's emotional attachment to an organization ( 1979). If employees have high levels of emotional attachment toward their job or organization, it could be expected that they would be motivated to perform better. MNC’s continue to rely heavily on expatriation even in an era of widespread, powerful, and cheaper information technology (1997) and even in those markets where there is plenty of skilled labor (1990).
Moreover, a need for knowledge transfer was highest for long-term assignments and lowest for frequent flyers. In this paper we proceeded further, suggesting that although all four types are connected to knowledge transfer, different types of assignments increase expatriates' ability and willingness to transfer knowledge to the subsidiaries to differing extents. Focusing on expatriates, such findings suggest that MNC’s could employ formal organizational mechanisms to enhance the ability and willingness of expatriates to share knowledge. However, dealing with only one determinant is not likely to enhance knowledge transfer unless other determinants are considered. Thus, developing internationally mobile expatriate managers is of prime importance to companies whose business interests span the global marketplace (1988; 1997; 1997). Using expatriate managers within the context of a globalizing corporate strategy can also be seen as a way to establish control and coordination functions in foreign operations. Generally, increasing the expatriate population follows a step-by-step process ( 1997). Recognizing the strategic need for internationally competent expatriate managers, firms must provide appropriate opportunities to help develop their expatriates’ careers. In addition, expatriate career development activities can be an important tool in recruiting and retaining managers already on foreign assignments. The literature provides a number of corporate career development activities that firms can use for expatriate career development are the following: Job posting employees are made aware of internal job vacancies through corporate online job posting systems on intranet sites (1997) Career path information provided by the organization individuals could assess their own career paths with corporate career paths ( 1986)
PREVENT EXPATRIATE FAILURE
The failure rates of expatriate personnel are well documented. The majority of research has focused on pre-departure and post-arrival training and orientation for the employee and other family members (1991). However, recruitment and selection criteria have as much impact on employee success in organization as orientation and training. Employee selection criteria based on technical competence alone will not lead to success in the global organization. Personality characteristics such as adaptability and flexibility as well as interpersonal skills are better prediction criteria ( 1981). However, on-site visitations and realistic insight into the foreign experience allow for realistic evaluation prior to departure. The global organizational performance can be greatly enhanced by employee training at all levels but management development is critical, stakeholders input is of value to the organization ( 1993).
The complex components of international compensation
Pay and conditions of employment differ significantly among various categories of employees and vary among industries.
Performance appraisal
Labor-management relations in the international environment.
Success and survival depend upon the ability of organizations to compete globally. The literature on expatriate adjustment has focused on the importance of back-home mentors and their instrumentality for future career advancement, this research explores the importance of on-site mentors for the effective socialization of expatriates into their current overseas assignments. The amount of mentoring received positively impacts on expatriate socialization, which in turn positively influences job attitudes, intention to finish the expatriate assignment and expatriate understanding of global business issues.
Specifically, expatriates are more likely to receive mentoring in small power distance, weak uncertainty avoidance and individualistic cultures. To effect a smooth transition to the host country employment, the human resource manager must anticipate and develop plans to address obstacles to the acculturation of the trailing spouse. It should not be assumed that only career issues need to be addressed and that the more traditional problems associated with an international relocation do not have to be addressed by the MNC. Adjustments may encompass a wide variety of work and non-work related issues such as: different values, attitudes, beliefs toward professionals who are expatriates, and loss of cultural "signposts" in the home country, e.g., friends, family, one's professional identity ( 1994). Therefore, cross-cultural training has to be given to the trailing spouse and the issue becomes how to effectively meet the goals of cross-cultural training (1994). Trailing spouses may also be employed in strategic alliance by the MNC. In this situation, the conflict of dual employment in the same MNC can be avoided and including opportunities with affiliates, the number of employment opportunities is expanded. One successful approach has been to hire the professional trailing spouse to develop training materials for other expatriates. In addition, when the trailing spouse has specific qualifications such as social psychologist use to assist in the actual training of new, younger expatriates. The training of expatriates and their families can be augmented by using expatriate managers and their trailing spouses who have returned home after a successful overseas assignment (1992).
EXPATRIATE REPATRIATION
The input from these expatriates' trailing spouses could provide executives and their families valuable insights in adjusting their mental maps and attitudes prior to actually relocating overseas, thereby, reducing the level of cultural shock. Anticipatory expectations on the spouse's and family's part should help to reduce work-family conflict during the foreign assignment ( 1990; 1991; 1991). If the expatriate's trailing spouse could assist others in integration or assimilation of a foreign culture, he could have a positive impact on acculturation of the family. Successful acculturation patterns will influence education, friendship patterns, learning the language of the country, as well as the general satisfaction of the transferees (1994). The focus of the MNC strategy of accommodation would be to reduce the "pain," dissatisfaction, isolation and relocation discomfort of the trailing spouse. Due to the long duration of the assignment, family perks are important elements in the relocation package. Kodak are directing their efforts to finding jobs for trailing spouses during the international assignment of the partner (1992). Equal employment opportunities for the trailing spouse, particularly if it is the wife, are difficult to find in many geographic locations and in some, it is nearly impossible for the trailing spouse to get a work permit without waiting an extended length of time (1994). There is always a remote possibility that the trailing spouse's company could provide a position in the host country. This type of serendipitous event should not be an integral dimension of the trailing spouse strategy due the low probability of it occurring. There are some indications that United States based MNCs are reducing expatriate staff, but this may be a reoccurring phenomena (1995;1996).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, if MNC’s are interested in using expatriates as knowledge transfer agents, they should invest in areas such as selection, pre-assignment, on-the-job training, language abilities as the nature of international operations and country experience determine the number of expatriates permanently located in the host country and their role as knowledge transfer agents. What remains under-researched is whether different types of expatriate assignments influence knowledge transfer in different ways. Even smaller organizations like Armstrong Word Industries and Raychem Corporation are attempting to build a global competency inventory of potential expatriate managers. The expatriate will have to provide social support to the trailing spouse relative to family-work conflicts as well as to their careers. The level of support will be contingent upon the duration of the foreign assignment, the degree of dissimilarity of both the host culture and its level of economic development. Increasing awareness of relocation challenges for international managers and their families as well as company-related cost considerations lead organizations to change the traditional form of expatriate assignments and experiment with various alternatives (2002;2003).
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