120 CHAPTER 5 SOURCING HUMAN RESOURCES FOR GLOBAL MARKETS – STAFFING, RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION FIGURE 5.2 The roles of an expatriate Agent of direct control Language node Agent of socializing Expatriate roles in the interplay of headquarters and local unit Boundary spanner Network builder Transfer of competence and knowledge The expatriate as an agent of direct control The use of staff transfers can be regarded as a bureaucratic control mechanism, where the primary role is that of ensuring compliance through direct supervision. Harzing51 found that German companies tend towards this form of control. She labels expatriates who are such agents as ‘bears’, arguing that the analogy reflects the level of dominance of this type of expatriate control. To a certain extent, using expatriates for control reflects an ethnocentric predisposition, but this can be important in ensuring subsidiary compliance, enabling strategic objectives for local operations to be achieved. The expatriate as an agent of socialization There is an implicit expectation that expatriates assist in the transfer of shared values and beliefs. Harzing names expatriates who transfer corporate values as ‘bumble-bees’. However, as Fenwick et al.52 point out, there has been little empirical investigation of the effectiveness of expatriates as agents of socialization. In fact, attempts to instill corporate values and norms ritualized in the form of certain expected behaviors often have negative results at the subsidiary level. Expatriates as network builders As we discussed in Chapter 3, international assignments are viewed as a way of developing social capital53 by fostering interpersonal linkages that can be used for informal control and communication purposes. Naturally, as employees move between various organizational units, their network of personal relationships changes, leading to Harzing’s analogy of expatriates as ‘spiders’ to describe this role. How these employees are utilized is person-dependent. People tend to nurture and protect their networks, to be very selective about the way they use their connections, and to evaluate the potential damage to key individuals in their networks if the connection was to be used inappropriately. In their study of project teams and networks, Schweiger et al.54 provide the following example of how international assignments assisted network development: I depended heavily on the contacts I had developed over the years. The time spent in international assignments was invaluable. I knew important people in several key operations. I knew how they operated and what was important to them. They also knew that I was credible and would help them when the opportunity arose.
