Discuss briefly the regiocentric and geocentric staffing approaches for international operations? Explain the relative advantages of each and the conditions under which you would choose one approach over another.
Regiocentric Policy
• Based on the premise of geographic or regional perspective (e.g. Europe, Asia etc.)
Advantages
– Facilitates more focused sensitivity to regionally local areas
– Facilitates knowledge transfer between regional subsidiaries
– Regional cooperation between subsidiaries
Disadvantages
– Relatively high risk of ‘federalism’ and loss of control
– Lack of global perspective
– Lack of mobility of expats between HQ and regional subsidiaries
Geocentric Policy
• Based on the premise of global perspective
• Recruits come from anywhere in the world
• PCNs, HCNs and TCNs are found in all key positions
• Used at globalization stage
Advantages
– Global perspective helps to develop an international executive team
– Overcomes ‘federation’ drawback
– Wider pool of human resources through international labour-market
Disadvantages
– Host governments may pressurize MNC to hire more HCNs from respective nations
– Increased training and relocation costs
– Can cause efficient coordination problems

Discuss the common causes of expatriate failure.
Expatriate failure is usually defined as a posting that either ends prematurely or is considered ineffective by senior management. Most research into the matter has come to the conclusion that failure rates are high and can vary between 20% and 50% depending on the country. Emerging countries such as those of Southeast Asia are considered higher risk than so-called advanced nations.

The costs of failure have been estimated by numerous means with widely varying results. Despite the lack of clarity, it is clear that a failed assignment in an overseas location is considerably more expensive than one occurring closer to home.

Below are the chief factors resulting in an unsuccessful expatriate assignment.
Family Stress
Most expatriate managers are challenged and excited to be in their new postings. They need to spend a lot of time at work since they are under pressure to adapt to the new culture and their overall responsibilities are often larger than they have experienced before.

As a result, the wives of expatriates spend a lot of time by themselves – and yes, trailing spouses are still usually female – and are cut-off from their own family and friends. At the same time, the wife is usually dealing with problems for which she has no previous experience. She may catch a maid stealing or get stopped by a policeman who wants a payoff for a non-existent offence. She may have been told that internet connectivity is available but then finds it takes 6 months to install. All through this, she will probably discover that suitable employment for herself is next to impossible in an emerging country – seriously damaging her own long-term career.

It is no surprise that it is generally the trailing spouse who suffers the greater culture shock in the new country. The result can be an unhappy spouse who does her best to impair the performance of the expatriate manager.

Total marriage breakdown is not an uncommon result. Unofficial numbers from the Asian Development Bank (a large development organization modelled after the World Bank) are that upwards of 40% of their expatriate’s marriages fail due to the stress of offshore postings.

The consequence is that many expatriate postings are either terminated early or the performance of the expatriate managers are impaired.

Cultural Inflexibility

It is common for inexperienced expatriate managers to be taken completely by surprise at the deep cultural differences in their posted country.

Expatriates can find that, after a seemingly open conversation about improvements to be made, staff members don't show up for work for 2 days. In meetings, local staff think it is acceptable to spend hours talking on and on until every possible issue is agreed to by everyone. If expatriate managers are to be successful, they will need to learn how to adapt to concepts such as “saving face” (the cause of staff members not showing up for work) and “building consensus” that are important in Asia.

Expatriates also need to realize that transforming their staff into Americans or Japanese workers has been tried and it doesn’t work. All expatriates manoeuver a narrow path between accepting local conventions on one side and aspiring to international standards on the other.

Southeast Asia has a rich variety of cultures. The differences in religion are one example. Thailand is graciously Buddhist, Indonesia is gently (but intensely) Islamic and Philippines is completely Catholic. As for Singaporeans, some say their only religion is work. Managing such varied peoples obviously requires very different tactics.

Emotional Immaturity

In their home countries, most expatriates are middle-managers with relatively ordinary lives. Once relocated to Asia, they are suddenly thrust into the national spotlight as the Country Manager of a high profile multinational organization. They have more people reporting to them than ever and often have more control over them.

On the personal front, expatriates may have household servants for the first time, are called upon to meet senior government officials and are generally made to feel important. Further, some expatriates may be attracting enthusiastic attention of certain local females seeking their own type of fame and fortune by landing a high-status foreign boyfriend or husband.

The combination of greatly expanded responsibility and social status can be difficult to handle for people lacking the emotional maturity to keep themselves grounded. It is not uncommon for expatriates to either destroy their career opportunities and/or marriages by ignoring responsibilities and succumbing to self-destructive temptations.

Responsibility Overload

In almost all cases, the responsibilities of expatriates in emerging countries will be larger than they are used to overseeing. Given the nature of emerging countries in Southeast Asia, expatriates may supervise 5 to 10 times more people than ever before.

In other words, a German IT Manager who managed 15 people in his home country could have 100 in Malaysia. An American call center manager with 100 people in the US can find himself soon overseeing 800 in Philippines.

Such large increases in responsibility are difficult for anyone to handle. Added to that, are the new challenges of managing expectations of head office managers and clients in other countries and who may not understand the cultural differences that are impacting results.

Physical Breakdown

Expatriates are generally motivated to succeed and excited about gaining international experience. As a result, they often work long hours in the early part of their postings to do “whatever it takes” to be successful. They are also adapting to seemingly overwhelming cultural differences with local staff and greatly expanded responsibilities.

On the home front, the families of expatriates are almost certainly going through their own severe cultural adjustments and may be clamouring for the managers’ time and attention to help them through it.

The combination of emotional despondency and physical exhaustion from elevated stress levels and overwork is a common problem for new expatriates -- otherwise known as burn-out. Unless alleviated, the result can be dramatically reduced effectiveness or work-interrupting illness for managers

What are the common training techniques for managers going overseas?
Cultural awareness training
Area studies (environmental, historical etc.)
Language training
Sensitivity training
Field experiences
Host-family surrogate
On-The-Job training (OJT)