An expatriate is a person who is designated to work in another country for the company. It occurs in a temporally basis and subsequently that person return to the same company (normally in another position) in the original country.
The company decision of sending a worker to another country is usually influenced by the requirement or availability of a job in a subsidiary. For these purposes companies need a worker with knowledge of the company’s strategy, procedures, etc. Ability to work and live successfully in a foreign environment is also an important criterion to determine who would be the best option.
When sending an expatriate worker, the companies are looking to achieve the completion of the job assignment, obtain a good degree of organizational learning and to transfer new skills and knowledge to the specific subsidiary.
The choice about who will be the employee who will do the work has to be very carefully chosen and there has to be a plan well developed. When it is not, some mistakes related with succession plans for example may occur. Another common mistake is the candidate selection criteria, it is important to identify in which cases it would be more efficient to look for technical skills and knowledge and when it would be better to select a person with a higher adaptability level. Mentoring and cross cultural training are essential to avoid cultural clashes that may destroy the whole work.
Some of the most common problems related with this are the short term progress made by expatriates, high rates of expatriates returning early, returnees that have no position waiting for them when they come back, high rates of quitting by repatriates, the high costs of failure of the project, and some others.
In the other hand we can see success factors that help to develop a good expatriation program. Job factors play an important role, finding similarities in the job held by the expatriate in the original country with the one that is going to develop; relational dimensions (cultural empathy, flexibility) are also very crucial in order to succeed; motivational state and interest for the work; family situation, implying that a worker with some familiar characteristics may be more or less compatible with working abroad; and finally language skills can be also very helpful, if the employee can handle the language of the host country his/her adaptation could be easier (language is just a factor that may ease the condition but is not the only one to take into account).
Overseas experiences are more related with individual goals and development. They can have as results the construction of valuable social networks, career development results from cultural experiences rather than work, eventual return to homeland, broadening perspectives, awareness of cultural differences building confidence and independence, changing career focus and starting new business when coming back home with different perspectives and ideas.
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