Case Study: Going international 1 Case Study: Going international John Smith, Associate Director for Global HR Development at Tech-Fit, a computer input/output manufacturer and supplier, had ended up at Tech-Fit through an indirect career route. John graduated from a good university with a major in Literature and a minor in French. He was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. John had spent several summers while in high school and at university backpacking around Europe. His facility for languages was impressive and he had an excellent working knowledge of Spanish, French, Italian and German. He could converse in Cantonese, as the result of working in a take away restaurant during university and had started a tutorial course in Mandarin last fall. Tech-Fit had started out as a 'spin off' firm from The TOP Computers (TOP) in the late 1970s. Patents combined with an excellence in engineering, an outstanding institutional sales staff, cost-sensitive production and pricing, all combined to make Tech-Fit a major force in the printer and optical scanner industry. Tech-Fit inherited a production facility in San Antonio, USA from TOP, but the company also had international production facilities operating in three countries: Mexico, Scotland, and more recently in Japan. A major new facility going was planned to start production in China late next year. Research and new product development activities were split between the home offices in the US, a printer center in Canada and an optical research 'center of excellence' in Scotland. Major sales, distribution and customer service centers had recently expanded to a range of international locations. John had three meetings today: Meeting with William Millers at 10 am: John's meeting with William Millers, a Plant Engineer recently repatriated from Japan, had not gone well. William was one of the last of the 'TOP legacies', a TOP engineer that had stayed on with Tech-Fit after the spin off in 1978. William had been a bright and promising young engineer back then, and was one of the first people chosen to go to Scotland in 1983. He was so successful in bringing that facility on line in an eleven month assignment that he was made lead engineer of the team that went into Mexico in 1989. The three year Mexican project did not go as smoothly. Certainly there were many unavoidable economic uncertainties during that period. Reviewing the files, John felt a large part of the problem was that William's team did not relate well to their Mexican counterparts. Furthermore, the Tech-Fit team did not treat the local and national government agencies with enough respect and sensitivity. John noted that permits and authorizations that should have taken weeks instead took six months or more. After the Mexican project William stayed on in the US. His assignment to Japan in 1999 was by sheer chance, as a last minute replacement for another engineer whose family member was diagnosed with a serious cancer some two weeks before he was to set off on assignment. John had helped design the pre-departure training program for the original candidate which had even included a one-week visit for the candidate and his wife. Today William was angry and disappointed that an 18-month assignment in Japan had turned into a 3-year assignment, and that a research position in the US 'promised' to him by a previous V.P. (two V.P.s ago) was filled by a younger US-resident employee. John bluntly countered that the 18-month assignment had become a 3-year assignment largely due to William's Case Study: Going international 2 unwillingness to train and hand over responsibilities to local engineers and his inability to work constructively with district and federal regulators in Japan. The conversation took a hostile turn and although John did not lose his temper, he was troubled by William's final comment: 'If this is how you treat the people willing to go abroad, you'll never get your best engineers to leave the US'. Teleconference meeting with executive career development team at 1 pm: John's major concern was a teleconference meeting at 1:00 with his Director who was currently visiting a sales center in the US, and the other four members of the executive career development team in the US. The general topic was a review and evaluation of training and development strategies for expatriate professionals and managers resulting from Tech-Fit's growth and the new production shift to Asia. Preparing for the 1:00 meeting, John reviewed the unofficial, yet 'standard' expatriate training program he had been instrumental in developing over the last three years. Though John recommended that all pre-departure activities should be undertaken, it was not compulsory. With the Chinese operation adding to the number of expatriate destinations, John realized Tech-Fit should have a more formal policy regarding international assignments. Feedback regarding the interviews and conversations with Tech-Fit employees with country experiences was mixed. Some had developed into longer term mentoring arrangements but other expatriates had found it not useful. Still, it was a low cost way of providing information. Language courses were problematic. On too many occasions, there was not the time - employees left the country midway through their language courses. He recalled the idea of more 'extensive' assignments requiring more 'complete' and 'rigorous' preparation from an MBA course he took last year. Obviously, China is a more challenging and difficult assignment than France, but can we differentiate treatment on the grounds of cultural difficulty? John had indirectly heard that Kimberley King Roberto, the Vice President for HR wanted costs cut and her delegates on the team would be pushing for streamlined (John had mentally translated that as cheaper) training programs, shorter expatriate assignments and a faster appointment of HCNs whenever possible. While John had prepared for this crucial meeting, he needed incorporate some information from his office files. More importantly, John asked himself, how can I suggest we make our training more rigorous given Kimberley King's focus on cost? Even if I win on this point, what will I answer when asked what methods or activities make up more 'rigorous' training? Finally, what is the role of language training? What form would cultural sensitivity training take? How would the organisation handle the geo-political aspects of cultural sensitivity training? The meeting with William had been disturbing. John knew that the current debriefing and counselling sessions had a reputation for being more 'tell and sell' than a meaningful exchange of ideas and insights. Top management had recently signalled this as a growing 'problem'. John had planned to gather data on repatriate turnover. Perhaps this should be given a higher priority. After all, how could Tech-Fit decide to plan for international assignments, involving more TCN movements, and the transfer of HCNs into its U.S. operations for training and development, without considering repatriation?

What are the challenges involved in effective career management for expatriates (PCN's)? Drawing on the information provided in the case study, what would you include in a pre-departure and repatriation training program? Why?