Discussion Topic: Managing Expatriate Assignments

The management of a firm's human resources represents a key strategic activity in a global business organization. People represent a firm's most valuable resource. How they are selected, hired, trained, compensated, and retained plays a decisive role in determining how well a business can achieve its dual strategic imperatives of reducing costs while creating added value for customers.

One big piece of managing a global workforce is the management of expatriate employees. Expatriate assignments are expensive to maintain, and failed assignments have high costs in terms of both financial loss and employee knowledge. To avoid failure, corporate HR departments must consider how to prepare the expatriate employee and their family.

After reviewing this information, discuss the following:

• Discuss three reasons that expatriate assignments often fail.
• For each of these three reasons, describe one tool or initiative that a company's global HRM department could employ to assist in combating the issue.
• Explain why it is strategically critical for global HRM departments to consider the needs of the entire expatriate family unit when designing a successful expatriate assignment.

To support your assertions, please utilize at least one academically credible research source in your response, both citing it in-text and listing it as a reference at the end of your post.