CH 15 Selecting Expatriate Managers

Concept and Brief Description

How to select expatriate managers? To be able to choose a person who can represent the organization needs to have technical competence in the area of operations. The organization should consider each candidate’s skills, learning style, and approach to problem solving. An expatriate manager to be successful, he or she must be sensitive to the host country’s cultural norms, adapt to those norms, and survive to the culture shock. Table 15.2 in the book provides a list of topics for assessing candidates for overseas assignments. The topics consist of motivation, health, language ability, family considerations, resourcefulness and initiative, ability, career planning, and financial.

To be able to adapt, an expatriate manager requires three kinds of skills: ability to maintain a positive self-image and feeling of well-being, ability to foster relationships with the host-country nationals, and ability to perceive and evaluate the host country’s environmental accurately.

Emotional Hook

It is very interesting the process of selecting an expatriate manager because he or she represents the organization and needs to be able to accomplish the organization’s goals to be able to be successful in that country. If the expatriate manager does not succeed because he or she cannot see the cultural differences to be able to adapt and learn form it, the expatriate will fail and the organization will fail too.

Key Points to Elicit discussion

The expatriate’s family is very involved in the expatriate assignment. They need to adapt to the culture as well as the expatriate. The family, as well as the expatriate can learn culture experience.

Facilitative Questions

If you were selected to be an expatriate manager, would you go and take your entire family? Once in a life time opportunity,