Personnel problems in "carry the flag" missions in foreign assignments - overseas business assignments

Business Horizons, Jan-Feb, 1995 by Robert L. Thornton, M.K. Thornton

In their Business Horizons article, "Preparing Yourself for an Overseas Assignment" (1994), Howard Tu and Sherry Sullivan discussed in some depth the preliminary steps an individual should take before going abroad on an assignment. In this article, we cover other sides of the problem, such as how managers make employces accept an overseas assignment, how they keep them there for a full tour, anti how they treat their careers when they return.

We shall discuss possible alternatives to such treatment. In doing this, we intend to take a step backwards in exploring the management of overseas subordinate organizations. Though we do not imply that managing foreign subsidiaries should go all the way back to the pre-Boeing and pre-Bell days when communication problems forced companies into "bottom line management," we do suggest that U.S. companies--unless they solve their expatriate problem--may be forced to entrust foreign citizens as U.S. subsidiary managers with more freedom of action than they now have.

We are not pioneers when it comes to recognizing the difficulty in using expatriates from the parent company to retain parental control over the overseas operation. Nor have managers been unwilling to attempt solutions. But too many previous attempts have failed. Our purpose is to show that the problem is multifaceted. It has many different causes for failure and thus requires a variety of alternative remedies.

In developing this article, we have made use of minicases to portray more vividly the conditions or problems we are discussing. Every minicase describes a real-life situation that involved the authors, their relatives, or their close business acquaintances--without, of course, using the actual names or identities. The individuals portrayed have lived and worked in the following places for combined periods: England (five years), India (two years), Germany (two years), Panama (four years), Zambia (three years), France (two years), Myanmar (six months), Greece (three years), and Angola (two years). All the jobs were classified as at least a junior executive or the equivalent; some were at quite senior posts. Some of the assignments were governmental, and the individuals held diplomatic passports for extensive times on several separate occasions. The majority of cases involved an entire family. The first is used to show us that the personal problems created by an overseas assignments need not always be serious; in fact, domestic transfers can also be accompanied by stress.

* Leon and Beth lived in Washington, D.C., where Leon was a consumer goods market planner. They lived in a pleasant suburb, hobnobbed with the neighbors, and shopped at Safeway. Leon went to work in his car or on public transport. Then, asked to take a position overseas, Leon moved his family to London. They lived in a pleasant suburb, hobnobbed with the neighbors, and shopped at Safeway. Leon went to work in his car or on public transport. Leon's job was little different, though at a slightly higher level.

In contrast, Perrie was the junior personnel officer at a publishing house in Charlottesville, Virginia. She drove her own car to work, was single, intellectual, lived in a walk-up apartment, and danced in amateur ballet as a hobby. Andy was a graduate student at the University of Virginia, lived in a small apartment, and graded papers as a hobby. He met Perrie at the ballet, married her, and got a reasonably well-paying job in Brooklyn. They moved into a grimy, cramped apartment in the Bronx. Perrie became a La Leche League leader, but had no other hobbies, no car, and little money for entertainment.

Lesson #1: Overseas tours may not be much different from living at home. A very large number of foreign job shifts present far less severe challenges than routine domestic transfers. A personnel manager might be better off to deemphasize the seriousness of the shift, even to forgo "cross-cultural training. "Perhaps we're better off not to tell prospective expatriates that we expect them to be unhappy.

WHY EXPATRIATES? peaking broadly and from extensive overseas experience, we believe there are at least three important reasons why U.S.-based companies employ American senior executives in the operation of U.S. subsidiaries overseas:

1. to transfer technology;

2. to offset skill shortages in the host country;

3. to perform a "carry the flag" mission.

The first---transfer of technology---can be done in one of two ways: An American technician can go abroad to learn from a foreign innovator, or an American specialist can be sent overseas to teach a newly developed technique to a foreign colleague. This operation can be very brief, or it can take from several months to more than a year. It can sometimes also be achieved by moving the foreign engineer to the United States. Transfer of administrative systems, such as data management, is done this way, although this operation is extremely situation-specific, usually short-term, and will be covered only casually in this article.