Abstract
One form of mobility with specific benefits for the creation of strong social ties is expatriation. Being delegated to a foreign business unit, the expatriate experiences physical co-location for a prolonged period of time and thus is able to develop social ties to the local workforce. Due to possessing social connections to the home unit as well, the expatriate engages in diverse knowledge flows. These transcend not only various organisational levels, but also have the potential to overcome spatial distance. Having (strong) social networks in various company sites, the expatriate connects diverse knowledge resources within and across business units.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Peripheral’ can be understood in a geopolitical sense (i.e. Global North-South-Divide), a sales-or production-oriented perspective which is unique to each enterprise, or metrically measured as distance between business locations, usually from headquarters to subsidiaries.
- 2.
Williams does not use the term “mobile workers” but “migrants” in the cited text segment. In doing so, Williams attempts to bridge migration and management studies, while he acknowledges conceptual differences of migration and mobility (cf. Williams 2007:371). Throughout his paper, Williams addresses expatriates and mobile workers as one distinct type of international migrants.
- 3.
As explained in Section. 2.1 the transfer of (tacit) knowledge is an interactive and transformative process of socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation of knowledge (Nonaka et al. 1996:835 ff.). Williams (2007:367) argues that particularly the reflective capacity of mobile individuals is a critical advantage for the process of knowledge conversion.
- 4.
Non-corporate forms of expatriation e.g. in military services, sports or education, or in other corporate contexts, such as trainee- or internships, are excluded from this working definition (cf. McNulty & Brewster 2017:30). Further, it is acknowledged that employees can express interest for assignments abroad questioning the relationship of those who initiate and those who follow. However, due to the great financial investment, expatriation follows an entrepreneurial logic and is pursued only if necessary from an organisational perspective.
- 5.
Assignments can be stipulated by contract or not and can be defined in both a broad or narrow sense.
- 6.
No consensus exists on whether selection and training should be treated as one pre-departure phase (cf. Walsh & Doughty 2009:317 f.), or whether the actual transfer abroad and associated processes of performance management should be considered as two different phases (cf. Mitrev & Culpepper 2012:162).
- 7.
It is important to note that transfer of knowledge through the exchange of personnel is not one directional, but as clarified before multidirectional. However, the common mode of assignments still implies sending personnel from headquarters to subsidiaries, so-called inpatriation, is less frequently applied.
- 8.
Although international assignments are financially costly, they promise a return on investments in the long run. In order to allow for a definitive statement about the real costs and benefits, these returns should be taken into account (Krell 2005).
- 9.
It needs to be pointed out that accompanying family members are not a burden per se, but indeed are a source of support, emotional stability and resilience with benefits for both the assignee and the company, since successful family adjustment positively affects the assignee’s performance abroad (Lauring & Selmer 2010, Malek et al. 2013, see also Section 4.1.3).
- 10.
Section 4.1.3 discusses the effects of pre-departure training.
- 11.
Cf. Section 2.1.
- 12.
This, of course, holds especially true for any interaction outside the corporate context; however, specific flows of knowledge with the host culture are out of scope.
- 13.
Apart from the corporate context, boundaries exist among different business activities (e.g. research vs. implementation) or industries (e.g. business services vs. manufacturing industries).
- 14.
Empirical research suggests that transacting is frequently achieved, whereas the other types of activities are more demanding (Barner-Rasmussen et al. 2010:4).
- 15.
See Section 2.3.3.
- 16.
Similarly to boundary spanning, knowledge is being moved across project teams, division, business locations etc. (Holzmann 2013:8, Pawslowski & Robey 2004:646).
- 17.
Brokering functions can also be assigned to institutions (Pemsel & Wiewora 2013, Meyer 2010:119), or IT-infrastructure (Kim et al. 2011, Lomas 2007:130).
- 18.
Robertson et al. (2007:214 ff.) names various forms of cultural shocks, e.g. different awareness of service, unfamiliar and ambiguous bureaucratic procedures, (non-)availability of products, different conception of personal space and physical contact, personal safety, different conception and understanding of time, communication due to lack of language proficiency as well as organisational differences at work.
- 19.
Adjustment describes a gradual process of developing familiarity and comfort in foreign cultures (Black & Mendenhall 1990:118, Torbiorn 1982). Three dimensions are distinguished: 1) general adjustment i.e. comfort experienced by the individual with overall living conditions; 2) work adjustment i.e. comfort with work-related aspects (e.g. work requirements, standards, expectations, responsibilities and tasks); and 3) interaction adjustment i.e. comfort with interacting and socialising with locals (Black et al. 1991:304, see also Salamin & Davoine 2015:185, Ramalu et al. 2010:114).
- 20.
Messmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran (2008:189 f.) point out that the pre-departure most often is of poor quality or non-existent, since companies often consider training as an expense and not as an investment.
- 21.
From an HR perspective it is important to note that buddy or tandem systems not only provide benefits for the incoming colleague, but it is an – often overlooked – opportunity for host country nationals to also gain intercultural competence (van Bakel et al. 2014:35).
- 22.
Similarly, intercultural training in the receiving unit can reduce feelings of resentment and increase tolerance of the local workforce for incoming staff.
- 23.
For empirical research based on the big five see, e.g., Caligiuri 2000b, Mol et al. 2005, Batti et al. 2014, Dalton & Wilson 2000.
- 24.
Learning is a necessary social and cognitive process for adjustment. Due to its indirect effect on the actual formation of ties, this aspect will only be indirectly dealt with.
- 25.
This has direct implications in practice leaving the selection process as arbitrary as it is.
- 26.
Guanxi describes an Asian cultural tradition of distinguishing between in-group and out-group members. Usually, members of social groups are internally well-connected, exchange support and information with each other, share mutual interest and benefit, but seal themselves off from out-group members (Varma et al. 2011:355, 359, Schlunze et al. 2015:49).
- 27.
The social norm Mianzi describes the fear of losing face in public. In practice, this means that Asian employees of lower hierarchical status are generally subordinate and reluctant to ask questions. This also impedes reverse knowledge transfer from local employees of lower status to expatriate employees of higher status (Qin et al. 2008:269 f.).
- 28.
Core self-evaluation comprises the dimensions self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control as well as emotional stability (Johnson et al. 2003:279).
- 29.
SPEs are special purpose entities set up to “to channel investments through several countries before reaching their final destinations. The existence of SPEs is one important factor that can distort foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics. First, transactions by SPEs inflate the FDI flows into and out of the country where they are located as investment passes through via SPEs to its ultimate destination. Second, SPEs can distort the geographic distribution of FDI statistics for countries that host a significant number of them because it can appear they are receiving investment from countries whose investors are just passing capital through SPEs. Likewise, it can appear that investors from this country are investing abroad when that investment really reflects the funds that have been passed through.” (OECD. Stat 2018).
- 30.
Refer to Section 2.3.1 for a thorough discussion of systematic literature reviews in the social sciences.
- 31.
The original query used the terms Expat* AND Knowledge for abstract, title and key words. The results were filtered by subject area and a total of 292 articles were retrieved for the subjects BUSINESS, MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTING, SOCIAL SCIENCES, ECONOMICS, ECONOMETRICS AND FINANCE, ARTS AND HUMANITIES as well as EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES. After screening each article, 153 articles were relevant for the analysis.
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Hünnemeyer, V. (2020). Expatriation: Social Networks and Knowledge Flows. In: Knowledge Transfers over Geographical Distance in Organisations. Perspektiven der Humangeographie. Springer Spektrum, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31018-9_4
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