Expatriates of Host‐Country Origin in South Eastern Europe: Management Rationales in the Finance Sector

Abstract

Multinational companies coming to grips with the major challenges of international staffing have developed a new practice. In recent years management scholars observed the assignment of so-called 'expatriates of host-country origin' (EHCOs), that is, employees of migrant backgrounds in the companies' parent country sent to work in their country of origin. This paper explores management rationales behind this practice focusing on the posting of employees to transition economies in south eastern Europe. Data from Austrian banks and insurance firms operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia provide the empirical basis. The analysis reveals that headquarters' management believe that due to their specific competencies EHCOs facilitate the relationship between the headquarters and the subsidiary, enhance resource accrual and offer competitive advantage. As institutional complexity in the host country and the cultural distance between parent and host countries increase, so do the relative advantages of EHCOs for management.

No place like home? Self‐initiated expatriates in their ancestral homeland

“…On the one hand, these expatriates appear perfectly suited to working in such countries, given the historical and cultural traits they share with HCNs, coupled with what is often a strong sentimental attachment to their host country; but there are various and quite subtle nuances that could, paradoxically, actually make adjustment more challenging (Barmé 2010; Fan, Harzing and Kohler 2020; Selmer 2002). The present study serves as a timely response to calls by researchers in the field for more research on this phenomenon (Bešić and Ortlieb 2019; Fan, Harzing and Kohler 2020).…”

“…Much of the IHRM literature has analysed expatriates working in countries to which they have little or no inherent ethnic, cultural, or historical link. But the experience of ‘diasporic returnee’ expatriates living and working in countries to which they have kinship ties also merits investigation (Bešić and Ortlieb 2019), particularly in light of the growing numbers of skilled, educated professionals who are ‘returning’ to their ancestral homelands for work (Barmé 2010; BBC News 2012). On the one hand, these expatriates appear perfectly suited to working in such countries, given the historical and cultural traits they share with HCNs, coupled with what is often a strong sentimental attachment to their host country; but there are various and quite subtle nuances that could, paradoxically, actually make adjustment more challenging (Barmé 2010; Fan, Harzing and Kohler 2020; Selmer 2002).…”

“…The context of our investigation is Malaysian self‐initiated expatriates (SIEs) of Chinese descent working in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this regard, our study represents a departure from those studies focusing on expatriates from Western countries returning to their ancestral homeland, which usually happens to be either a different Western country (Bešić and Ortlieb 2019) or an emerging Asian economy (Jain 2013; Nguyen‐Akbar 2017; Wang 2016, 2017). At the same time, our study differs from many of the ‘intra‐Asian’ studies undertaken by Selmer and associates, which have either focused on PRC‐based expatriates from Hong Kong (Selmer and Shiu 1999) (or vice versa – Selmer, Ebrahimi and Mingtao 2000a,b) or have adopted a broader perspective by analysing ‘overseas Chinese’ expatriates generally (Selmer 2002).…”

The effect of improvisation in turbulent times on IHR strategy: A case study of French MNEs in Tunisia

“…The long-standing debate between global integration and local responsiveness (Prahalad & Doz, 1987), or standardization versus adaptation, has been renewed (Romelaer & Beddi, 2015), especially for HRM strategies, through the debate between convergence and divergence (Ahmad et al, 2019;Ayentimi et al, 2017;Brewster et al, 2016;Chung et al, 2020;Edwards et al, 2016;Jiang & Yahiaoui, 2019;Yahiaoui, 2015). Thus, IHRM has become an exceedingly crucial issue for MNEs (Beši c & Ortlieb, 2019;Björkman & Welch, 2015) and employee availability (Ayentimi et al, 2017), among others, often differ from country to country. Heenan and Perlmutter (1979) identified four MNE HR strategies: ethnocentrism, polycentrism, geocentrism and regiocentrism.…”

Research paradigms in international human resource management: An epistemological systematisation of the field

“…(Flick, 2018c: 127f) For instance, in the area of self-initiated expatriates, researchers conducted semistructured interviews for data collection, and these were thereafter analysed following a grounded theory approach in order to explore this relatively new research field on the factors determining why self-initiated expatriates were employed and why they choose employment in developing countries (Kumar and Chhokar, 2018). Bešić and Ortlieb (2019), in a multiple case study, draw on semi-structured interviews to theorise about management rationales behind the assignment of so-called 'expatriates of host-country origin' to subsidiaries in transition countries.…”