Liability of Asianness? Global talent management challenges of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean multinationals

One way or another? An international comparison of expatriate performance management in multinational companies

“…Japanese MNEs adopt several US‐style EPM practices but maintain a unique set of EPM strategies and practices. We found that strategic and practice levels of EPM in Japanese MNEs seem to have a strong fit and echo Japanese HRM practices and control mechanisms of foreign subsidiaries that are deeply rooted and difficult to change (Ferner, 1997; Ferner et al, 2001; Froese et al, 2020). Accordingly, due to their ethnocentric staffing strategy, Japanese MNEs apply expatriate‐specific performance management that focuses on frequent evaluation and continuous feedback.…”

“…In particular, Japanese MNEs are different from Anglo‐Saxon and Germanic MNEs. That is, because Japanese MNEs tend to pursue ethnocentric staffing strategies (Froese et al, 2020; Pudelko & Tenzer, 2013) and use expatriate‐specific performance management with higher local environment consideration to achieve social control of their foreign subsidiaries with Asian‐style leadership, the practice level of their EPM tends to focus on the monitoring of expatriates' roles and behaviors (e.g., continuous feedback, frequent performance appraisal) rather than enhancing their employees' careers through expatriation (Tungli & Peiperl, 2009, p. 166). The US MNEs' stronger emphasis on relating EPM to training and development and performance‐based pay, in turn, echoes findings from prior studies on EPM based on US MNEs (Martin & Bartol, 2003).…”

“…Although performance management has evolved in the US context, and, even though there is a pressure of convergence for MNEs (Pudelko & Harzing, 2007), strong country differences prevail. While EPM of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic MNEs are largely similar, the comparison with Japanese MNEs reveals intriguing strategic and practice levels of EPM in Japanese MNEs seem to have a strong fit and echo Japanese HRM practices and control mechanisms of foreign subsidiaries that are deeply rooted and difficult to change (Ferner, 1997;Ferner et al, 2001;Froese et al, 2020). Accordingly, due to their ethnocentric staffing strategy, Japanese MNEs apply expatriate-specific performance management that focuses on frequent evaluation and continuous feedback.…”

“…Therefore, they tend to use more ethnocentric staffing policies and prefer social over bureaucratic control (Ferner et al, 2001). Japanese MNEs tend to globally integrate and export their management philosophies and HRM practices, such as long‐term orientation and teamwork, to their foreign subsidiaries (Beechler & Yang, 1994; Grill, Maharjan, & Sekiguchi, 2016), as well as strongly pursue an ethnocentric staffing policy (Froese et al, 2020; Gaur et al, 2007; Oki, 2020; Sekiguchi, Froese, & Iguchi, 2016). In this approach, decision‐making is centralized at headquarters, and key positions at home and in subsidiaries tend to be filled with expatriates from Japan.…”

“…In this study, we investigate how MNEs from different countries manage the performance of their expatriates. This question is of high theoretical importance as there is a vivid discussion around whether and how human resource management (HRM) practices differ across countries (divergence) or converge to a similar model of HRM (Farndale, Brewster, Ligthart, & Poutsma, 2017; Festing, 2012; Froese, Shen, Sekiguchi, & Davies, 2020; Kaufman, 2016; Pudelko & Harzing, 2007; Rowley & Benson, 2002). Research based on institutionalist theory suggests that country context strongly affects HRM practices and points toward country‐specific differences (divergence) (Björkman, Fey, & Park, 2007; Doellgast & Marsden, 2019; Welch, 1994).…”