Shuttling Between Cultures: Expatriation in the Context of Sweden

Being a successful global business player depends on firm’s ability to mobilize its resources worldwide. For this reason getting the right people with the right skills, at the right time, at the right place is crucial and makes expatriation one of the most important issues of today’s business world agenda. In terms of expatriation; national culture provides the context for the whole process. The aim of this study is to explain the expatriation process in Sweden from the cultural saliency perspective. The research based on the processual view of expatriation. Cultural saliency approach is used in order to find out the peculiar aspects of expatriation process in Sweden. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are used for conducting comparison among different national cultures. Main research domain of this study is qualitative. Research design is inspired by inductive ethnography. Empirical material is generated by conducting semi-structured interviews, thus the method is labelled as “indirect inductive ethnography.” Reflexivity is sought throughout the analysis by the support of hermeneutics. It is found that expatriation in Sweden is mainly conducted for knowledge transfer purposes. Companies have structured plans for expatriation. Technical adjustment to work in Sweden is not problematic but on the other hand, human side of socio-cultural and work adjustment is found to be problematic due to the rigid distinction between home-life and family-life and closed loop socialization. Expatriation process should be customized according to the cultural saliencies. Swedish national culture should be compared with the expats’ national culture and idiosyncratic expatriation process for each expat should be offered. A refined model of expatriation process is offered as a conclusion