International strategies and expatriates management: do they run together?

International Human Resource Management is one of the most crucial business activities that companies have to face for competing worldwide. The literature about this theme is extremely vast and a large number of scholars analyzed the challenging process of selecting and managing human resource at international level (Schein, 1977; Hofstede, 1980; Dobson, 1990; Bird and Mukuda, 1991; Wright and McMahan, 1992; Schuler and Jackson, 1996; Barney and Wright, 1998; Black et al., 1999; Dowling, Welch and Schuler, 1999; Stahl, Miller and Tung, 2002; Stahl et al., 2009; Docquier and Rapoport, 2012). Managing human resources requires specific business competences regardless of type of strategies and level of internationalization achieved by a firm. The problem states not only in selecting the appropriate candidate for a position, but also in managing people by planning specific career paths in according to company’s needs (Schuler, 1992; Harris and Brewster, 1999; Stahl, Miller and Tung, 2002; Stahl et al., 2012; Cerdin and Brewster 2014; Collings, 2014). This happens regardless of whether the multinational enterprise has to choose a low level export manager or a sales executive director. In both cases, the firm has most probably to organize international assignments and monitor the adaptation process of expatriates in foreign countries (Black and Gregersen, 1991; Manev and Stevenson, 2001). The aim of this paper is to present some critical issues about expatriates. Despite several scholars emphasize the positive implication of international assignments (Kogut, 1985; Barlett and Ghoshal, 1989; Black et al., 1999), our goal is to identify the problems that a company has to deal with, such as moving managers worldwide, defining their degree of power and planning their careers, especially when expatriates come back to their home country (Bird and Mukuda, 1991; Dowling, Welch and Schuler, 1999; Harvey, Novicevic and Speier, 2000; Selmer, 2001; Dickmann and Doherty, 2008; Park and Shan, 2013; Kirk, 2016). Therefore, from the human resource management perspective, it is relevant to highlight some crucial questions: 1. How does the firm manage international assignments, in respecting expatriates’ expectations, culture and motivation? 2. To which extent do international executives adapt to foreign contexts? 3. What about “ethics” in managerial behavior and practices in relation to different work environments? This paper is mainly descriptive and is based on the review of specific literature concerning international human resource management. As a support, we present the result of some interviews to top executives working for multinational companies. The interviews allowed us to gather significant information about their experiences in foreign subsidiaries, drawing the attention to some interesting managerial implications related to international careers. Our findings highlight that international assignments are crucial for developing the ability to develop and manage numerous relationships within the "network" of actors involved in the company’s internationalization process. In these terms, expatriates represent the link between strategic centre e peripheral units (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Harzing, 2001) and, at the same time, the vehicle to disseminate knowledge and innovation (Schuler, 1992; Bonache and Zàrraga-Oberty, 2008). However, the analysis comes to light that improvements in managerial performance at the end of international experiences not always take place. The problem is due to a sort of discrepancy between the will (and need) of companies to internationalize their staff and the human resource policy adopted, for example in relation to managers’ career paths, expectations and repatriation. This incongruity can compromize both organizational “climate” and effectiveness of international strategies