Expatriates:

The world has become a global world, borders have disappeared and organisations
have gone global. This has increased the need for expatriates to handle organisation’s
international assignments abroad which require expert hands. An expatriate is an
employee who is working and temporarily residing in a foreign country. Some firms
prefer to call such employees ‘international assignees.’ The Mauritius Commercial Bank
has sent expatriates to Madagascar mostly because:

 Control and co-ordination of operations

 Transfer of skills and knowledge
 Managerial development

In order to operate strategically, the MCB has linked foreign assignments more closely
to the strategic operational requirements. This requires a careful assessment of whether
an expatriate is the best choice in global sourcing decisions. It also implies a need to
assess the cost effectiveness of expatriation

International assignments create expatriates:

In any organisation, the primary objective of the human resource management (HRM)
function is to ensure that the most effective use is made of its human resources. To
achieve this, HR professionals undertake a range of activities around sourcing,
development, reward and performance management, HR planning, employee
involvement and communications. If the organisation has a strategic HR function, these
activities will support and inform organisational strategy. HR professionals are also used
extensively in organisational change and development initiatives. For international
organisations, these HR activities need to be co-ordinated across both the home
country and different national subsidiaries and to take into account the needs of both
parent country nationals (PCNs), host country nationals (HCNs) and third country
nationals
(TCNs).

Expatriate Failure:

Expatriate failure is usually defined as a posting that either ends prematurely or is

considered ineffective by senior management. Most research into the matter has come
to the conclusion that failure rates are high and can vary between 20% and 50%
depending on the country. Emerging countries such as those of Southeast Asia are
considered higher risk than so-called advanced nations.

The costs of failure have been estimated by numerous means with widely varying
results. Despite the lack of clarity, it is clear that a failed assignment in an overseas
location is considerably more expensive than one occurring closer to home.
Below are the chief factors resulting in an unsuccessful expatriate assignment:

1. Family Stress
Most expatriate managers are challenged and excited to be in their new postings. They
need to spend a lot of time at work since they are under pressure to adapt to the new
culture and their overall responsibilities are often larger than they have experienced
before.

As a result, the wives of expatriates spend a lot of time by themselves – and yes, trailing
spouses are still usually female – and are cut-off from their own family and friends. At
the same time, the wife is usually dealing with problems for which she has no previous
experience. She may catch a maid stealing or get stopped by a policeman who wants a
payoff for a non-existent offence. She may have been told that internet connectivity is
available but then finds it takes 6 months to install. All through this, she will probably
discover that suitable employment for herself is next to impossible in an emerging
country – seriously damaging her own long-term career.

It is no surprise that it is generally the trailing spouse who suffers the greater culture
shock in the new country. The result can be an unhappy spouse who does her best to
impair the performance of the expatriate manager.

The consequence is that many expatriate postings are either terminated early or the
performances of the expatriate managers are impaired.

2. Cultural Inflexibility

It is common for inexperienced expatriate managers to be taken completely by surprise

at the deep cultural differences in their posted country.

Expatriates can find that, after a seemingly open conversation about improvements to
be made, staff members don't show up for work for 2 days. In meetings, local staff think
it is acceptable to spend hours talking on and on until every possible issue is agreed to
by everyone. If expatriate managers are to be successful, they will need to learn how to
adapt to concepts such as “saving face” (the cause of staff members not showing up for
work) and “building consensus” that are important in Asia.

Expatriates also need to realize that transforming their staff into Americans or Japanese
workers has been tried and it doesn’t work. All expatriates manoeuver a narrow path
between accepting local conventions on one side and aspiring to international standards
on the other.

3. Emotional Immaturity

In their home countries, most expatriates are middle-managers with relatively ordinary
lives. Once relocated to Asia, they are suddenly thrust into the national spotlight as the
Country Manager of a high profile multinational organization. They have more people
reporting to them than ever and often have more control over them.
 On the personal front, expatriates may have household servants for the first time, are
called upon to meet senior government officials and are generally made to feel
important. Further, some expatriates may be attracting enthusiastic attention of certain
local females seeking their own type of fame and fortune by landing a high-status
foreign boyfriend or husband.

The combination of greatly expanded responsibility and social status can be difficult to
handle for people lacking the emotional maturity to keep themselves grounded. It is not
uncommon for expatriates to either destroy their career opportunities and/or marriages
by ignoring responsibilities and succumbing to self-destructive temptations.

4. Responsibility Overload

In almost all cases, the responsibilities of expatriates in emerging countries will be

larger than they are used to overseeing. Given the nature of emerging countries in
Southeast Asia, expatriates may supervise 5 to 10 times more people than ever before.

Such large increases in responsibility are difficult for anyone to handle. Added to that,
are the new challenges of managing expectations of head office managers and clients
in other countries and who may not understand the cultural differences that are
impacting results. In MCB for instance, the majority of expatriates leave due to
responsibility overload, whereby they do not have time for themselves.

5. Physical Breakdown

Expatriates are generally motivated to succeed and excited about gaining international
experience. As a result, they often work long hours in the early part of their postings to
do “whatever it takes” to be successful. They are also adapting to seemingly
overwhelming cultural differences with local staff and greatly expanded responsibilities.

On the home front, the families of expatriates are almost certainly going through their
own severe cultural adjustments and may be clamoring for the managers’ time and
attention to help them through it.

Recruitment and Selection:

Recruitment is defined as searching for and obtaining job candidates in sufficient

numbers and quality so that the organization can select the most appropriate people to
fill its job need. “People are at the heart of our success.” MCB. MCB identifies its
candidates by developing the criteria of job description and job specification and acting
upon these criteria job vacancy ads are spread through different medias like
newspapers and internet.

Selection is the process of gathering information for the purposes of evaluating and
deciding who should be employed in particular job. Best candidates according to MCB’s
selection boards are selected. The candidates who are finally selected, are offered
appointments as probationary officers, after signing the following bonds:

(a) Bank’s secrecy bond.

(b) Bank’s security bond.
(c) Service agreement bond.

Staffing policies:

Perlmutter (1969) identified three different international orientations (ethnocentric,

polycentric and geocentric) that have become the standard way to describe MNC
staffing policies. MNCs following an ethnocentric staffing policy would appoint mostly
parent country nationals (PCNs) to top positions at their subsidiaries, while MNCs
following a polycentric staffing policy would prefer to appoint host country nationals
(HCNs). Firms with a geocentric staffing policy would simply appoint the best person,
regardless of his/her nationality and that could include third country nationals (TCNs),
nationals of a country other than the MNC’s home country and the country of the
subsidiary. In a later publication, Heenan and Perlmutter (1979) defined a fourth
approach, which they called regiocentric. In this approach, managers are transferred on
a regional basis, such as Europe, and it often forms a mid-way station between a pure
polycentric/ethnocentric approach and a truly geocentric approach. It is important to
note that these staffing policies apply to key positions in MNC subsidiaries only.
Although some PCNs or TCNs might still be found at middle management, MNCs
normally appoint host country managers at this and lower levels.

Repatriation:

Repatriation is the process of returning a person to their place of origin or citizenship.

This includes the process of returning refugees or military personnel to their place of
origin following a war. The term may also refer to the process of converting a foreign
currency into the currency of one's own country. When expatriates have failed to do
their respective duty, MCB brings them back to Mauritius.