Expatriation Case

Expatriation is a term used when an individual moves away from his country of origin for work related reasons with the intention to return to the country of origin."A well-designed selection system for expatriates is critical to the success of global assignments(Nicholson et al., 1990)" as the expatriate is the main link between the parent country and the host country, he or she is the one that will take the culture of the organisation to the host country and take their particular skill abroad (Ozbilgin , 2005, p.104) . Therefore it is important for the recruitment process of the expatriate manager to be thorough and relevant, as they are about to be sent on an expensive task it is important that the right individual is chosen for the job to ensure the success of international expansion. Tsai-jung et al (2005) made logical suggestions that personality traits have a direct link with expatriation adjustment, he claimed that certain personalities had an advantage over others when adjusting to a new culture. The big five personality are as follows; extroversion, agreeableness, conscientious, open mindedness and neuroticism. Each personality has different traits which have their own advantages and disadvantages, enabling the individual to either succeed or fail in the host country. He used black et al(1991) model for his assessment on expatriation adjustment. For example Tsai-jung et al(2005) claims that extrovert individuals will adjust better than their introvert expatriates, this is because they are more talkative and considered to be social, similarly (INSERT HERE) also concluded a study of expatriates in Malaysia and the results showed that extrovert individuals had adjusted well. However the literature went on to suggest that the personality traits that may be successful in one country may not necessarily be successful in another, different host nationals respond to different personalities. " In other words, an expatriate will best fit with the local culture when his or her personality traits demonstrate strengths related to the culture's most relevant

aspects (c.f. Chatman and Barsade, 1995)". So from this it is important to recruit expatriate candidates whose personality is best suited and less likely to clash with the host country subordinates to ensure that the operation runs as smooth as possible. Black et al. (1992), claimed that managers who were not judgemental on others behaviour and performance in the new culture are more readily adjusted for expatriate assignments because they are more willing to try new things for instance, a manager may realise that the workers in the host country have a different work ethic to what he or she is generally used to. A non judgemental manager will see this as a new way of doing things where as a judgemental manager may think the host country staff are underperforming and could lead to unnecessary disciplinary, which could cause tensions in the future with the rest

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