Expatriate Management

Predicting cross-cultural training performance: The validity of personality, cognitive ability, and dimensions measured by an assessment center and a behavior description interview.

“…A survey by Andersen Consulting, for example, revealed that among the best 32 of Fortune 500 organizations, 94% offered language training and 69% offered other cross-cultural training to international assignees. Sinangil and Ones (2001) cited another recent survey of 250 companies, showing that approximately 63% offered crosscultural training to their expatriates. These usage percentages are much higher than those reported in earlier surveys, in which usage was estimated at around 25% (e.g., Black & Gregersen, 1991).…”

“…Several recent surveys (cited in Sinangil & Ones, 2001) illustrate that cross-cultural training is increasingly used as a staffing practice in international human resources management. A survey by Andersen Consulting, for example, revealed that among the best 32 of Fortune 500 organizations, 94% offered language training and 69% offered other cross-cultural training to international assignees.…”

“…However, recent reviews have indicated that the selection process of international managers is still intuitive and unsystematic (Deller, 1997;Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997;Sinangil & Ones, 2001). One of the problems is that the selection of people for foreign assignments is often based solely on job knowledge and technical competence (Aryee, 1997;Schmitt & Chan, 1998;Sinangil & Ones, 2001;Tung, 1981).…”

“…One of the problems is that the selection of people for foreign assignments is often based solely on job knowledge and technical competence (Aryee, 1997;Schmitt & Chan, 1998;Sinangil & Ones, 2001;Tung, 1981). Another problem is that in the past, researchers have mainly tried to determine a list of (inter) personal factors responsible for expatriate adjustment versus failure (e.g., Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985;Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997;Ronen, 1989) but that "there is apparently little research on designing selection systems which might be effective predictors of success in overseas assignments" (Arvey, Bhagat, & Salas, 1991, p. 378).…”

Predicting Expatriate Job Performance for Selection Purposes

“…In this respect, Arthur and Bennett (1995) note that more than five decades of research on expatriate selection has failed to yield a clear and explicit knowledge structure of what it is we should be training and selecting for. Evidence for different schools of thought may be found in the fact that some researchers seek an answer to this criterion issue in the expatriate's adjustment (e.g., Black, 1990), whereas others (e.g., Dalton & Wilson, 2000) emphasize the expatriate's job performance as the criterion of choice.Although the antecedents and consequences of expatriate adjustment have been well documented (see Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005;Hechanova, Beehr, & Christiansen, 2003, for meta-analytic reviews), many authors within the expatriate management literature have lamented the unavailability of job performance criteria for expatriates (see, e.g., Arthur & Bennett, 1995Hawes & Kealey, 1979;Kealey & Protheroe, 1996;Mol, Born, & Van der Molen, 2003;Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997;Sinangil & Ones, 2001;Werner, 2002).Nevertheless, there has recently been an increase in empirical publications vis-à-vis expatriate job performance. This is affirmed by two meta-analytic publications about the relationship between training and expatriate job performance (see Deshpande & Viswesvaran, 1992;Morris & Robie, 2001).…”