Expatriate Failure Problems

Executive Summary

Expatriate failure has been empirically proven to be correlated with the divergence in cultural values and attitudes held by employees from different nations, leading to different work related standards and practices (Hofstede 1980, Bennett 1986,Thornhill 1993). An unsuccessful expatriate assignment is thus costly both for the organisation and damaging to the individual's own career. As such, New Horizons Consultancy Group Ltd contends that investment in pre departure training by Impact IT as well as post arrival programs are pivotal to minimising culture shock and maximising IJV efficiency and functioning (Selmer, Torbiorn and Corinna 1998 pg 834).

The report stresses that by becoming better acquainted with Indian value systems, the four Australian expatriate managers from Impact IT will be able to reduce the potential for conflict between the two new partnering firms and become more attentive to developing culturally consistent management styles and practices for the Indian business environment (Gopalan, Rivera 1997 pg 158).

Introduction

Business success in the Australian-Indian Joint Venture between Impact IT and its new Indian IT partner can only be sustainably achieved by acclimatisation of expatriates to a diverse business and social culture. The assumption held by Impact IT Australian CEO that ‘good persons always manage', (Selmer et al 1998 pg 831) hence the selection of technically supreme employees for the expatriate position, is both naive and perilous. While technical ‘hard skills' are necessary for IJV performance, Impact IT must ensure that the expatriate's own cognitive frame of reference is analogous and suited to that of the Indian host culture. New Horizons Consultancy Group Ltd has composed a recommended training and development program that seeks to equip the four expatriates as well as their partners and dependent children, for their two to three year assignment. The two month pre departure program and continuous post arrival scheme is sequential in nature. Sequential training will provide constant guidance for the incremental restructuring of the expatriate's traditional frame of reference towards greater consistency with Indian culture (Selmer et al 1998 pg 835). The conclusive aim of this training program is to allow the expatriates to eventually be self sufficient and provide them with lifelong learning skills so that they can independently trounce unintended situations in the host country (Porter, Tansky 1999 pg 47).

The training and development program is partitioned into two stages – pre departure including an orientation based preliminary visit, language training and CCT, and post arrival training including on site mentoring and the development of an expatriate