Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
Prepare for your exams
Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points to download
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
Community
Ask the community for help and clear up your study doubts
Discover the best universities in your country according to Docsity users
Free resources
Download our free guides on studying techniques, anxiety management strategies, and thesis advice from Docsity tutors
A master's thesis in sociology that explores the experience of international assignments on the careers of expatriate employees. The study reveals a discrepancy between how companies and employees perceive the impact of expatriation on careers and the career value of an international assignment. The thesis uses a phenomenological approach and incorporates theories such as neo-Marxist theory, Bourdieuan career theory, and expectancy theory to understand the situation of the expatriate employee.
What you will learn
Typology: Lecture notes
1 / 42
This page cannot be seen from the preview
Don't miss anything!
Sociologiska Institutionen
Magisteruppsats i sociologi, 15 h.p. Vt 2013
Handledare: Vanessa Barker
Abstract
A common practice in multi-national enterprises is to staff important managerial roles in overseas operations with personnel from the company’s country of origin: expatriate managers. Homecoming expatriates often experience that the competence they have acquired abroad is not recognized when returning home. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how expatriates experience that international assignments affect their careers. The theoretical framework used includes sociological theories from neo-Marxist theory, Bourdieuan career theory and expectancy theory.
This thesis uses qualitative methodology and a phenomenological approach to investigate the purpose and the research questions. The empirical part of the thesis has been conducted in two phases where five international mobility managers have been interviewed in the first phase. In the second phase interviews where held at a multi- national Swedish headquartered company where five interviews were conducted.
The results indicate that there is a discrepancy between how company representatives (managers) and employees consider international assignments and expatriation in relation to employee careers. There seems to be a lack of clear understanding of the impact of expatriation on employee careers and also of the career value of an international assignment for an employee.
Keywords:
International Assignments, Expatriation, International careers, Career wobble.
Introduction
We are living in a global context and companies expand all over the world. Expatriation is a phenomenon that stems out of the wider phenomena of globalisation. The world is said to be more global with the implication that people and money in general are moving around the globe more frequently than before. When companies become multi-national companies (MNC: s) and expands to new areas of the world, establishing themselves in foreign countries, the significance of questions regarding expatriation becomes more important to discuss (Hill, Cronk and Wickramasekera 2011). Globalization as a term is often regarded as something abstract at a high level of abstraction. Expatriation of employees to work in overseas locations is something very concrete and a direct product of the globalization process on the higher level of abstraction (Hill, Cronk and Wickramasekera 2011).
A common practice in multi-national enterprises is to staff important managerial roles in overseas operations with personnel from the company’s country of origin. These persons are called expatriate managers (Hill, Cronk and Wickramasekera 2011). These practices are currently very common in multi-national enterprises (Tharenou and Harvey 2006). To expatriate a manager is very expensive (Krell 2005). Expatriation serves several purposes for MNC:s. Expatriation is typically used to support foreign operations within the same company. Expatriation may also be used for human resource development and organisation development purposes. Expatriates might be sent abroad to develop talents or with the purpose of strengthening the flow of cultural knowledge between offices in different countries within the MNC (Dickmann, Brewster and Sparrow 2008).
The purpose of expatriation used to be of task specific character: the expatriate was needed to do a certain task in the overseas location, for example establish a new filial or support a newly started foreign operation. Today expatriation is used for a wider range of purposes. Organisations have recognized the need of information exchange between local offices and the HQ and the possibility to develop potential talents through expatriation missions abroad (Dickmann, Brewster and Sparrow 2008). With the advent of new forms of expatriation purposes and missions, new problems arise. Some scholars have pointed out the need to understand underlying
intrinsic motivation is crucial for good performance during international assignments and the impact of career motivation in international assignments is yet to be discovered.
Some researchers have pointed out that the research has drawn little attention from commercial firms (Black and Mendenhall 1990; Shen and Lang 2009) and that this may be due to the lack of theoretical grounding in the previous research (Shen and Lang 2009). This might not be very strange considering the methodology used by researchers in this field of study. This thesis means that it is important to seek validity for the research results as a whole, and not just focus on reliability for statistical results from quantitative data sets. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the relatively unexplored field in the research field by focusing on actors’ motivations and beliefs related to expatriation and careers.
Purpose
The purpose for this thesis is to explore how expatriates experience that international assignments affect their careers. What view does the organisation have on careers for their staff sent on international assignments? Is there a discrepancy between the two views?
Definitions
There are many definitions of what a career is. This thesis adopts the assumptions about careers used by Mayrhofer et al (2007): careers are located at the “intersection of societal history and individual biography” (Grandjean 1981 p1057) and represents actors’ movement through a social structure over time (Becker and Strauss 1956 p253), they link micro- and macro-frames of references (Schein 1978) that traditionally have been regarded as indissoluble (Barley 1989; Gunz 1989; Hughes 1937).
This thesis focuses on employees’ professional careers. A professional career is in this thesis the journey the employee undertakes in his or her working life. The professional career is excluding private activities and focusing on salaried positions in an employee’s working life. As pointed out by Hughes (1937) career theory (on the theory level of abstraction) needs to incorporate both subjective and objective dimensions of careers. This thesis focus mainly on the subjective
dimension of careers, how individual employees apprehend their careers and how this is related to the organisational regime they are working under.
Research question
From the problem discussion and the purpose the research question can be summarised to: How can we understand expatriate employees' experience of international assignment in the context of globalisation? The thesis seeks to explain the apparent discrepancy between the employee's positive career expectation and the reception of transnational work.
Thesis outline
The thesis departs in the section theory and previous research where an outlook of theories and previous empirical studies in the field is undertaken. In this section it is explained what a career is and what issues previous research have discussed. The theoretical point of departure is then summarised. Thereafter follows the section methodology which explains the thesis’ methodological choices and considerations including ethical considerations in social sciences research. In the subsequent section the thesis results is accounted for. The result section presents the empirical evidence obtained during the study. The results are presented and analysed thematically based on the study's theoretic approach: in conclusion, the study's results and its implications. The discussion section concludes with an account of some issues that emerged during the conduction of this study and finally there are suggestions presented of ideas for future research.
organisation ends. Their own survival and career development dependent on such identification, many professionals slowly emerge as a new caste of ‘organisation man,’…” (Derber 1983 p330).
Career capital
Mayrhofer et al (2007) proposes that Bourdieu’s theory of habitus can be used as a powerful tool to understand international careers. Bourdieu’s terms habitus, capital and field can give guidance to how international careers can be understood. Careers unfold within a pattern set of practices that constitutes a network of positions. Individual employees make their moves in a social context that could be seen as career fields: “Owning a specific portfolio of field-relevant capital, individuals try to maintain or improve their place in the given and unfolding network of work- related positions.” (Mayrhofer et al 2007 p92). Bourdieu’s notion of habitus would in the career context mean that the actor thinks and acts according to the rules of the field: climbing hierarchical ladders, increasing reputation, achieving expert status etc.
Capital is an integral part in Bourdieu’s theory of habitus (Crossley 2001). Individuals possess both a specific habitus and what Bourdieu calls capital. More specifically four kinds of capital: economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1986). This gives meaning in the context: “In a similar way, different types of career habitus are to a greater or lesser extent suitable for different career fields… Career habitus is the deeply internalized, usually unconscious incorporation of the social environment; career capitals, although linked to the individual, are more easily to recognise externally. The interplay between career capitals and career habitus in a specific career field, populated by other individual and collective actors, contributes the emerging career patterns.” (Mayrhofer et al 2007 p95).
Bourdieu (1986) describes symbolic capital as a particular social field’s rules that specify which combination of the three basic forms of capital that will be authorised as symbolic capital, thus becoming socially recognised as legitimate. In the career context symbolic capital is interpreted in the term career capital: the particular sort of capital valued within a career field (Mayrhofer et al 2007). Theoretically an international assignment could be seen as symbolic capital among managers if this is something that is regarded as something of high value for a good manager.
The importance of career capital in relation to international assignment is in how the career capital concept can be used to understand expectations and effect on motivation for international assignments (Mayrhofer et al 2007). The employee and the employer are normally both aware of the fact that the employee has a professional career by working for the employer. Optimally there should be an exchange between the two parties about career progress and potential outcome of performing well in a certain work position (Cerdin 2008; Mayrhofer et al 2007). In this way both the employee and the employer can satisfy their needs from this relationship. Career capital could as a concept be used to understand how the employee is developing and performing when pursuing a professional career (Mayrhofer et al 2007). There are optimally a few outspoken or implicit facts that both parties are aware of, for example good management performance normally leads to higher career capital: An experience of a managerial position with good results which both parties consider valuable. Similar it may be that international assignments experience is perceived as something favourable that enhances the employee’s career capital.
Expectancy theory
Expectancy theory stems from theory streams in both psychology and sociology. It states in essence that people value the result of what they give and they get from the result of what others get from the same equation (Vroom 1964; Lawler 1981; Merton and Kitt 1950). The very essence of careers is affected by expectancy in that good behaviour is promoted and that one could enhance the chances of career opportunities by acting as expected by the organisation: doing a good job. Career management has as a purpose to motivate employees to do a good job. This is often based on motivation theories of various kinds. The purpose of career management is to promote good work which is rewarded so that employees are encouraged to work even better. The individual does something good that leads to a career reward that leads to a continuation of good behaviour or even increases the "good" behaviour (le Grand 2003). This simple explanation is clear but not entirely unproblematic. An effort is not necessarily a concrete event that can be measured or clearly observed. A good work can be a complicated pattern of events usually with multiple interacting actors. As work has become more of a team play it can be difficult to deduce the individual’s contributions to the group. There is a problem in deriving the labour input to be rewarded. It can also be difficult to know what an (contextual) appropriate reward is: what
Methodology
This section starts with an account of the methodological considerations made in this thesis and their implications for the study. The phenomenological point of departure is then discussed where the researcher bias is accounted for. The execution of the study is then described to show how the study was conducted. Thereafter follows an account of ethics and validity.
Methodological considerations
This thesis explores how expatriates experience that international assignments affect their careers. It focuses on how individual employees apprehend their careers and how this is related to the organisational regime they are working under. Previous research has embraced a quantitative research orientation but this thesis will take a qualitative approach to the topic.
Qualitative method in general and interviews in particular can be a fruitful method to discover information about underlying values and thoughts that may not be embraced when filling out a quantitative questionnaire (Aspers 2007; Silverman 2006). By conducting qualitative research this thesis aims to bring more knowledge of the underlying motivation in actors of an organisation. The thesis focuses on the employee-side with both present candidates for expatriation as well as repatriates. The thesis further tries to shed some light on the managerial thoughts concerning expatriation and employee careers displayed by managerial representatives in the organisation.
As previously mentioned the main focus is subjective career aspects, how the employees subjectively conceive of their careers, which makes interviews suitable (Silverman 2006; Peräkylä 2005). Silverman (2006) writes that a researcher must take precaution and not use interviews out of routine but consider possible alternatives and Aspers (2007) states that a researcher must be aware of his or her limitations, both personal and external. Limitations such as time and fiscal resources excludes some other possible methods that might have given fruitful data: an observation study in the work place at both the overseas and home location was thought of but discarded due to lack of monetary resources hence the final choice of solely conducting
interviews. Interviews further give the researcher a possibility to dig deeper into the informants’ stories and opinions than would be possible with statistic or observational methods.
Phenomenological approach
This thesis adopts a phenomenological approach to explore actors’ perception of expatriation and careers and their underlying beliefs and motivations in relation to this topic. Phenomenological approaches are often used to describe the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept (Creswell 2007). The focus is to explore what different individuals’ experiences have in common to come down to the concepts “universal essence” (Creswell 2007 p58). The researcher bracket’s out his or her own personal experience and try to look at the empiry collected from a perspective outside his or her own understanding of the concept and extract the essence of the experience (Creswell 2007; Aspers 2001).
Bracketing out researcher bias
This section will bracket out the researcher’s previous experience with the topic and the field as described by Creswell (2007):
I have as the author of this thesis tried to reflect on my own experience and describes it here. I have not had a corporate career yet and I have no personal experience of expatriation in the corporate sense. I have only had minor employment periods in my life and have spent my time at university which can be seen as a kind of career, however not a corporate career. What I do have experienced that comes close to expatriation is a period of exchange studies in Perth, Australia. It can be said that this in some aspects is similar to an international assignment in a company. I strived hard for achieving good results in school and applied for exchange studies. I then prepared myself and arranged with all the details around moving to my host university. I represented my home university as an exchange student at the host university, studied there for one semester and then returned home. I had little help from the university to settle the details around my studies overseas and managed most practical issues myself. I had however a contact person at my home university as well as a contact person at the host university. I returned to my assigned study program when I returned back to Sweden.
expatriation: what is the company perspective on expatriation, which questions are most important to the company and what do the companies choose to emphasize in the expatriation process? Another purpose was to conduct an initial empirical test of the theoretical assumptions in the academic literature reviewed to see what relevance that could be assigned to different topics in the expatriation research field. Some practical limitations were also discovered and taken into account, for example where potential informants were working and how to gain access to relevant employees for conducting interviews. From the information given in the first empirical part the research focus was narrowed down to only embrace careers in relation to expatriation and international assignments.
Part two
After the first part a case study method was chosen as the primary source of data. In the first part the focus was on how companies view the expatriation process and for the second part it was decided to focus on only one company when searching for the expatriate employee’s view on the topic. Creswell (2007) advocates the case study when the researcher can gain access to several informants within an organisation and it is meaningful to interview several informants that have common pre-requisites. Companies have different international mobility policies and have organised the work around international assignments in different ways. Some companies outsource all the work related to international assignments (i.e. pre-departure training, overseas assistance et cetera). A company was chosen that has centred the human resources related to international mobility in its headquarter in the Stockholm area. The company was chosen after an interview with its manager of international mobility. This choice was taken on both practical and theoretical grounds: practical to be able to gain access to a wide range of informants and theoretical in the sense that only employees with the same organisational background working under the same conditions were to be interviewed. It can be interesting to compare narratives from informants with different pre-conditions for their international assignments career experience but it was for this thesis chosen to be more relevant to be able to compare narratives developed under common conditions and organisational restraints due to the relatively small number of informants in the main study.
Choice of informants
The purpose with the thesis is to reveal underlying motivations and intrinsic career motivation and thoughts around possibilities and restraints regarding career and international assignments hence it is sensible to recognise different kinds of international assignments and their different phases. Therefore a heterogeneous stratum of informants was selected. The company has mainly three kinds of expatriate assignment contracts: short-term, long-term and an international talent development programme, ITDP. The purpose of the first two is to perform a mission abroad whereas the ITDP seeks to give talented employees international experience within the organisation to develop their skills needed in the organisation. The selected stratum included employees with experience on long-term contracts and ITDP-contracts. It included employees who had already done a contract abroad, who had undertaken ITDP, who was to go on a long term contract and who was to go on an ITDP contract. In addition two management representatives were selected, one HR-manager and the manager of international mobility (international assignments), in total five informants were selected and all were subsequently interviewed.
The manager of international mobility can be seen as a gatekeeper (Aspers 2007; Silverman
followed the ethical guidelines developed by the Swedish council of research (Vetenskapsrådet 2011). In addition to the ethical guidelines the researcher has strived to show a professional and respectful attitude towards the informants and showed respect for their integrity. This focus on ethics and respect is not solely taken out of regulative constraints such as the ethical guidelines, but is also regarded by the researcher as something that might increase the reliability of the results.
Analysis
The notes from the interviews have been read and edited after each interview. The interviews have been conducted during a period of two months with time between each interview. Some academic scholar’s means that it is important to get time in-between interviews to reflect on the empiry collected (i.e. Aspers 2007; Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). Each interview was carefully read and analysed after each interview. Aspers (2007) points out that the analysis of empiric material is a process were the first analytical phase starts already when the first interview starts, where the researcher continuously reflects on the empiry during the collection phase.
After all empirical material was collected an analysis was conducted. The material was read through and was structured and mapped down. It resulted in the coding into themes that was done. The coding was done manually without computer aid using colours, one colour for each theme. The coding procedure is analogue with the method Aspers’ calls “the margin method” (Aspers 2007 p172). The coded themes were then analysed more deeply and were interpreted from the theoretical framework for the thesis. The theoretical framework covered much of the analysis but parts of the empiry that was dissonant with the theoretical framework were reinterpreted in a similar way as Aspers calls “reciprocity between theory and empiry” (Aspers 2007).
All interviewees have contributed with about as much material for the analysis. In the section result none of the informants is overrepresented. People do of course express themselves more or less concise but this is not reflected in the results section in favour of a particular informant. None of the informants has however been cited more often than the others. Personal integrity and confidentiality are watchwords in this research and terms or expressions that can be traced to a specific informant have been exchanged to generic expressions.
Validity
There is no standard view on validation within qualitative research. There are different validation strategies used (Creswell 2007; Silverman 2005). Silverman points out that it is important to produce credible results within qualitative research (Silverman 2005). This thesis can be said to take a pragmatic view on credibility: the thesis is de facto validated through two major validation strategies mentioned by Creswell (2007). The first is a solid description of the research process as written in the method section. The second is that the thesis has gone through continuous examination by the tutor, which could be said to be a form of peer-review.
This thesis has 10 informants out of which only one informant has extensive personal experience of the whole expatriation cycle. Other informants have some personal experience from expatriation and other informants are working in expatriation management. This should be taken into consideration when reading the results and analysis. It is likely that information saturation is not reached in this empirical study regarding the topic of personal expatriate experience. This is a limitation in this empirical study and the results from the empirical study must be interpreted with great caution. There is no reason to believe that the information collected would be untrue but the material is not to be utilised to compose general explanations about the phenomenon examined.
