The International Journal of Human Resource Management - Report Writing Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the concept of expatriates, arguing that sloppy use of the term in the past has led to problems of inconsistent research, incompatible findings and a lack of clarity in the field. The increasing interest over the last dozen years or so in other forms of international experience, often equally poorly conceptualized, has compounded the problem. We argue for the need for greater construct clarity in studies of expatriates and, by extension, of other forms of international experience. Specifically, we attempt to clarify to whom does the term ‘expatriate’, and specifically ‘business expatriate’, apply and the boundary conditions under which expatriate employment is enacted.

Introduction

Defining concepts is frequently treated by scientists as an annoying necessity to be completed as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible. A consequence of this disinclination to define is often research carried out like surgery performed with dull instruments. The surgeon has to work harder, the patient has to suffer more, and the chances for success are decreased. Like surgical instruments, definitions become dull with use and require frequent sharpening, and eventually, replacement. (Ackoff, 1971, p. 671)

This article is based on the notion that there is a lack of consensus as to how expatriates should be defined which has caused problems in the international human resource management (IHRM) field; and that the situation is getting worse. We argue that there has been a sloppy and almost casual use of terminology, a failure to define terms adequately, or in many cases at all, and too many unstated assumptions about the people being researched that, collectively, has resulted in reducing understanding of the meanings of ‘expatriate’. This problem means that the measures used in empirical studies may not accurately represent the underlying concept being tested (Cappelli, 2012). It may then be difficult to draw inferences from research and to assess and compare findings across studies (Bono & McNamara, 2011). Critically, we argue that the current situation has led to a considerable ‘jangle fallacy’ problem (Molloy & Ployhart, 2012) and a set of poor expatriate concepts that ‘do not necessarily sum to a coherent whole’ (Johnson, Rosen, Chang, Djurdjevic, & Taing, 2012, p. 63). This results in the worrying problems of construct redundancy and construct proliferation that cause confusion and misinterpretation, where ‘old and new constructs overlap to such an extent they are largely interchangeable’ resulting in a ‘proliferation of definitions, indeterminate construct boundaries, and confounded measures’ (Klein & Delery, 2012, p. 59). Following Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Podsakoff ’s (2016) line of thinking, we propose a tighter definition of the term ‘expatriate’, and ‘business expatriate’ in particular, and a more analytic approach to other forms of international experience. To avoid misunderstanding, we include in this all kinds of business, and all kinds of multinational enterprises (MNEs), including those employed in the public sector and non-governmental organizations. Our aim is to achieve construct clarity about the concept of expatriates in the IHRM discipline for the next generation of expatriate research. Specifically, we address:

(1) to whom does the term ‘business expatriate’ apply in the context of IHRM research?

(2) what are the boundary conditions under which business expatriate employment is enacted?

(3) what types of business expatriates make up the talent pool of candidates that are available to MNEs for the purposes of global staffing?

We contribute to construct clarity (Cappelli, 2012; Molloy & Ployhart, 2012), in this case about expatriates, by illustrating that the word ‘expatriate’ no longer adequately describes the concept it claims to investigate. We offer a theory-specific statement about business expatriates that parsimoniously organizes and clearly communicates the boundary conditions under which, and to whom, the concept does and does not apply (Bacharach, 1989). Such precision will provide IHRM scholars with a common language and clear conceptual understanding about expatriates in general (Podsakoff et al., 2016). We hope it will stimulate further relevant and interesting research and, perhaps, novel theoretical insights (LePine & Wilcox-King, 2010) offering more detailed, practitioner-relevant implications that capture the context-specific nature of expatriate employment.

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