Abstract
Many international hotel chains (IHCs) have sent their employees, their expatriates, overseas to maintain corporate standards, fill skills gaps, and transfer technology and corporate culture in their worldwide properties. The workforce is the backbone of any organization, and IHCs should pay careful attention to trends as well as published research to reduce failures that will ultimately affect its financial state as well as the organization as a whole. This chapter will be on the hotel industry in China. Hence, the focus of this chapter is on the matter that when IHCs are selecting expatriates to send to China, IHRM and IHCs need to identify and assess these expatriates' other characteristics (O). These O characteristics are: (1) desire to prematurely terminate an expatriate's assignment; (2) stable competencies; and (3) intercultural/international business communication.
TopIntroduction
Much research on expatriates’ competences derive from the study of sojourners, people who go to live and work in another culture on a temporary basis, but often for an extended period of time (Ho, 2012). Sojourner groups include business personnel, military personnel, foreign students, international development advisors, diplomats, emergency relief workers and international peacekeepers. Two major challenges, according to Tran (2008), confront all people making an international transition (please refer to Tran’s study for details regarding Tran’s research methods). The first challenges has to do with the person’s capacity to become well-adjusted and personally satisfied in the new culture. The second challenge has to do with the person’s potential to function and work effectively in the new environment. Accordingly, by definition, a competent expatriate is someone who is able to live contentedly and work successfully in another culture (Vulpe, Kealey, Protheroe, & MacDonald, 2001). Further, research has found that what predicts the ability to live contentedly in a new culture, often differs from what is needed to achieve professional success (Kealey, 1989).
Managers and multinational corporations (MNCs) face challenges of expatriation process anytime expatriates from one culture interacts with employees outside one’s home country. Littarell, Salas, Hess, Paley, and Riedel (2006) define expatriates as individuals who relocate from one country to another (Tran, 2008) for at least one year. Expatriate management is required when corporations experience shortages of local skilled management (Kaye & Taylor, 1997), when corporations wish to broaden specific individual’s experience by giving new ventures by entering new territories (Torbiorn, 1994). Edstrom and Galbraith (1977) identify three general corporation motives for making this type of transfer to fill positions, management development, and organization development.
As such, the purpose of this chapter is the third phase of the expatriate selection, identifying and assessing the expatriate candidate’s characteristics, also known as the other characteristics (O), beyond the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) (Ho, 2012; Kravetz, 2008; Tran, 2008). These O characteristics are (Ghafoor, Khan, Idrees, Javed, & Ahmed, 2011; Ho, 2012; Hsieh, Lin, & Lee, 2012; Joshua-Gojer, 2012; Ko & Yang, 2011; Rozkwitalska, 2012; Tran, 2008; Vojinic, Matic, & Becic, 2013):
Key Terms in this Chapter
PCN: Parent Country National.
ROI: Return-on-Investment.
Knowledge: refers to a body of information about the theoretical and practical understanding of a subject, acquired by a person through experience or education.
Competent Expatriate: A competency is a cluster of related knowledge, skills, and attitudes that affects a major part of one’s job (a role or responsibility), that correlates with performance on the job, that can be measure against well-accepted standards, and that can be improved via training and development.
TCN: Third Country National.
Hard Skills: usually include professional knowledge and task-oriented skills.
Expatriate Turnover: occurs when expatriates wither quite or return to their home country prior to the completion of their overseas tour.
Expatriation: is most commonly described by selection, training and preparation, transfer and adjustment, monitoring and performance management, and finally, repatriation of the individual.
Other Characteristics (O): congruent to Tung’s five basic training programs of cross-cultural training, as: 1) desire to prematurely terminate an expatriate’s assignment, 2) stable competencies, and 3) intercultural/international business communication.
IHCs: International Hotel Chains.
Ability: means the sufficiency of strength to accomplish something, especially the physical and mental quality to perform activities.
Expatriate Failure: as a term encompassing a broad range of themes such as premature repatriation, low performance, and adjustment problems. Many other terms, such as expatriate turnover, expatriate transfer, and expatriate recall rates, are also used interchangeably.
Competency: the state or quality of being properly or well qualified.
Emotional Quotient (EQ): is the social intelligence.
Skills: refer to the application of data or information with manual, verbal, or mental proficiency.
Soft Skills: are those skills associated with the behavior necessary for successful interpersonal interaction.
Intelligence Quotient [General Intelligence (IQ)]: the ability to grasp and reason correctly with abstractions and solve problems.
Guanxi: Chinese characteristics of the strength of personal relations.
Cultural Intelligence (CQ): defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings.
MNCs: Multinational Corporations.
Intercultural Capabilities: is captured by the construct of cultural intelligence (CQ), which is defined as a “person’s capability for successful adaptation to new cultural settings, that is, for unfamiliar settings attributable to cultural context.
Expatriate: an individual who relocate from one country to another ( Tran, 2008 ) for at least one year.