Company Overview of LankaBangla :

LankaBangla started its journey long back in 1997 as a joint-venture financial institution with
multinational collaboration with Srilanka having license from Bangladesh Bank under Financial
Institution Act-1993. Now LankaBangla is the country’s leading provider of integrated financial services
including corporate financial services, retail financial services, SME financial services, stock broking,
corporate advisory and wealth management services. Under the broadest umbrella of products and
service offerings, we are the lone financial institution to operate credit card (MasterCard and VISA) and
also provide third party card processing services to different banks in Bangladesh. LankaBangla is a
primary dealer of government securities since November 2009. Since 2006 LankaBangla has been listed
in both DSE & CSE in Bangladesh.

LankaBangla Finance Limited started its journey long back in 1997 as a joint-venture financial institution
with multinational collaboration having license from Bangladesh Bank under Financial Institution Act-
1993. Now LankaBangla is the country’s leading provider of integrated financial services including
Corporate Financial Services, Personal Financial Services, SME Financial Services, Stock Broking,
Corporate Advisory and Wealth Management Services.

They have gone through a business process reengineering to build capacity to our clients’ superior
experience than any time ever. The company now operates in centralized administrative framework
through cutting edge technological environment. LankaBangla is serving a wide operational periphery
covering major business hubs of the country.

Under the broadest umbrella of products and service offerings, we are the lone financial institution to
operate credit card (MasterCard and VISA) and also provide third party card processing services to
different banks in Bangladesh.

LankaBangla is the market leader in the capital market services and has been giving all-out effort to
develop an efficient, vibrant and transparent capital market in Bangladesh. Through our subsidiary
LankaBangla Securities Limited, we are providing top notch broking services and leading the industry
with cutting edge trading, top rated research and customer service. Another subsidiary, LankaBangla
Investments Limited is a premier investment bank in the country providing corporate advisory, issue
management and portfolio management services. Additionally, LankaBangla Asset Management
Company Limited is providing professional wealth management services.

In quest of sustainable business, LankaBangla is positioning itself to provide enduring value to the
people, customers, shareholders and the communities. There are some other key divisions involved for
setting up the strategic priorities by managing balance sheet prudently, by helping to provide various
decisions, by creating, operating and maintaining IT infrastructure, by nurturing human resources to
deliver the best and uphold the livelihood of our community.

We are the recipient of National Award for Best Published Accounts and Reports for the past few years
declared by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB). And also received “Category
Winner – Financial Service Sector” and “Overall Winner” for the “Best Presented Annual Report and
SAARC Anniversary Award for Corporate Governance Disclosure 2014” from South Asian Federation of
Accountants (SAFA, An Apex body of SAARC). This is undoubtedly an igniting accomplishment and it is a
reflection of ethical practices, true compliance and a great team work.

LankaBangla practices participatory management and adheres to industry best practices in all
endeavors. Increasing stakeholders’ value is a natural driving force for the people at LankaBangla. Our
long standing sustainability efforts are creating environmental and social value while we step ahead. By
embracing high ethical standards, governance and transparency, we dream to grow big. Our ethos is
simple: “We envision our success being the growth partner of our enterprising clients. We are
committed to change the lives of the ordinary”.

Vision Of LankaBangla :

To be the most preferred financial service provider in creating, nurturing and maximizing value to the
stakeholders, thereby and growing together.

Mission of LankaBangla:

1. Be a growth partner for our customers, ensuring financing and superior experience
2. Maintain a culture of meritocracy in the DNA of the company
3. Be sustainable and ensure quality returns to our valued shareholders
4. Uphold efforts to develop our community

Core values of LankaBangla:

1. Cherish a sense of ownership

2. Be customer centric
3. Grow as a team
4. Act with integrity & professionalism
5. Deal with respect

Background of Our Expatriate:

Our expatriate, Mr Primal Silva, Project manager of LankaBangla who is from Srilanka shared his
experience as an expatriate. He joined Lankabangla Finance in 2010 and still giving his service as an
expatriate. As a project manager, Lankabangla buys and hire software and servers from Srilanka and Mr
Primal Silva handle this software and help LankaBangla to gain what they need. His assignments are long
term basis. He extend his job and still working in this country. As per his interview, he got enough
support from the organization for fulfilling the assignments. He considers his hard work as the most
conducive attribute behind his success. And he is quite happy with the behavior from the organization.

Literate Review

Article 1

Cornell University School of Hotel Administration

The Scholarly Commons

Cross-industry studies have estimated U.S. expatriate failure, defined as the premature return from an
overseas assignment, at between 25 and 40 percent when the expatriate is assigned to a developed
country and about 70 percent then the expatriate is assigned to a still developing country.2 When those
rates are considered in light of estimates that the direct cost of each failure is between $250,000 and $1
million,3 the situation becomes alarming. In fact, one study estimated that the cost of failure for U.S.
multinationals is over $2 billion a year.4 But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Multinational
corporations also suffer from damaged relations with clients, local businesses, and local government
officials, while the expatriate returns home with a loss of self-esteem, self-confidence, and prestige
among peers. (Jeffrey1972)

The importance of subjective cultural characteristics cannot be overstated. Without a thorough

grounding in those aspects, an expatriate may arrive at the host property and mistakenly think that
because the front desk, kitchen equipment, and room furnishings look the same as those in New York
City, the property should function as it might in New York City. While the objective aspects may operate
the same, the people will not necessarily perform their jobs the same way.

Understanding the objective aspects should help to make the expatriate feel comfortable in the new
environment, and a comprehensive understanding of the subjective aspects of the host culture will
facilitate acculturation and enhance performance. Cross-cultural training programs should include both
objective and subjective aspects of culture. .( H arrison,1994)

Tung provided the groundwork for this topic by examining expatriate failure and success in several
industries. Her seminal study found that the three most com m on reasons for American expatriate
failure were that (1) the spouse couldn’t adapt to the host culture, (2) the manager couldn’t adapt to the
host culture, and (3) there were severe family related problems that stemmed from the international
assignment. Not surprisingly, Tung also found that the three most desirable attributes for expatriate
managers were adaptability, flexibility, and good com m indication skills.

The research by Tung and others, however, did not include hospitality organizations. The results may
therefore have limited utility for hospitality practitioners. It is likely that the desirable attributes for
expatriate hotel managers are somewhat different from those for expatriate managers in other
industries. W hile adaptability, flexibility, and good communication skills may be desirable characteristics
for any expatriate manager, the nature of the hospitality industry requires a highly developed set of
interpersonal and relational skills, and expatriate hotel managers must understand the local culture and
com prehend the needs of a diverse customer base. (Tung)

Because of the lack of hospitality research on expatriate failure and performance, we asked a num ber
of questions that are summed up by the following general questions: (1) Are perceived failure rates for
expatriates in the hotel industry similar to failure rates in other industries? (2) Are the reasons for failure
and the desirable attributes for expatriates in the hotel industry similar to the reasons for failure and the
desirable attributes in other industries? (3) Is cross-cultural training necessary, and what are the
perceived benefits of training? We sent questionnaires to 110 managers who were employed in large
multinational hotel companies and had been assigned to an overseas position during the past two years.
Forty usable surveys were returned. The typical respondent was male, was married, had children, had
about 16 years of international experience, and spoke three or more languages. As a group the
respondents represented 15 nationalities and had worked in 20 countries. Only 25 percent of the study
participants had themselves participated in cross-cultural training. This suggests that such training isn’t
very widespread, an observation that is reinforced by the lack of any literature on hospitality-specific
cross-cultural training. (Winfred& W inston1995)

The high incidence of expatriate U.S. managers' being unable or unwilling to complete their overseas
assignments suggests that more needs to be done to prepare those managers and their families.
(Jeffrey& Tracey1997)

The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates

This paper provides a critical analysis of research and notably quotations in the field of expatriate failure
rates. Over the last three decades it has become almost ‘traditional’ to open an article on expatriate
management by stating that expatriate failure rates are (very) high. Virtually every publication on the
topic defines and measures expatriate failure as the percentage of expatriates returning home before
their assignment contract expires. Of course, premature re-entry might be a very inadequate way to
measure expatriate failure. One can easily argue that those expatriates who stay on their assignment
but who fail to perform adequately are (potentially) more damaging to the company than the ones who
return prematurely. Furthermore, successful completion of a foreign assignment does not mean that the
possibility of expatriate failure has been avoided. Sometimes, returning home poses even larger
problems than the foreign assignment itself. The repatriate must face re-establishing himself within the
home organization and readjusting to the home culture. Failure to do so, for whatever reason, can also
be regarded as expatriate failure. These reservations being made, in this paper it is argued that there is
almost no empirical foundation for the existence of high failure rates when measured as premature re-
entry. The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates seems to have been created by massive
(mis)quotations of three articles. Only one of these articles contained solid empirical evidence on
expatriate failure rates and in fact showed them to be rather low. Anne-Wil K. Harzing 2006

While there is now a mature literature on many aspects of the management of employees on
international assignments (IAs), there is still considerable controversy about the numbers of expatriates
who actually fail in these. Traditionally, this has been defined as the number of staff who return home
before the agreed end of an IA, because of poor work performance and/or personal problems.
Employing this definition, the research described in this paper supports the view that expatriate failure
rates (EFRs), among UK employees are, indeed, very low (on average, around 8 per cent). However, this
article argues that this traditional definition has limitations and does not reveal the true extent of the
problems which IAs can cause to some expatriates and their dependants both during their time abroad
and after returning to the UK. The paper then goes onto argue that a broader definition of 'failure' is
needed, which includes: an acknowledgement of the considerable stresses and strains experienced by a
minority of staff who are under-performing on IAs; the 'poaching' of successful managers by other
companies while they are abroad or at the end of their IAs; the often negative outcomes of repatriation
experienced by many employees in recent years; the negative (and largely unreported) effects on some
families and the career prospects of partners and negative views about the prospect of overseas
postings in the future Nick Forster 2011

The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates': a reappraisal

The established understanding of the concept of expatriate failure, discusses its associated problems
and presents a more sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of the concept. The article argues
that it might well be time to abandon the concept of expatriate failure altogether and instead draw on
the general human resource literature to analyse problems related to turnover and performance
management in an expatriate context.

The factors involved in expatriate selection, causes of expatriate failure, the selection of women for
international assignments, and prevailing attitudes toward women expatriates. These interim findings
are based on interviews and questionnaire surveys with managers from 60 leading Australian, New
Zealand, UK, and USA multinationals. Nationalities participating included American, Australian,
Canadian, Hong Kong Chinese, British, Indonesian, French, Japanese, New Zealand, Singaporean,
Taiwanese, and Thai. The findings suggest that companies still do not recognize that international
selection is considerably more complex than domestic selection; women expatriates still face barriers;
and much more research is desperately needed in this new and challenging area. (Deirdre McCaughey
and Nealia S. Bruning .)

Expatriate Selection: Insuring Success and Avoiding Failure

The experience of expatriate selection and assignment has been a mixed success for multinational firms.
Several selection strategies have been used, but failure situations in individual assignment cases are
known to be in nearly every multinational firm. New research has indicated that the problem of insuring
success for an expatriate is quite different from the problem of avoiding failure. A different set of factors
is critical to each of these two problems. When this distinction is made, the variables related to the
expatriate selection and assignment problem are considerably more ordered and operable.

Increasing globalization continues to drive corporate expansion into new foreign markets, requiring
organizations to staff foreign management positions using expatriate employees. Incidents of expatriate
failure are high, however, and can cause substantial losses for the organization. Although many
organizations pursue varying strategies to minimize expatriate failure, more organizations should
capitalize on synergies between expatriate programs, the tenets of job satisfaction, and, indirectly,
predictors of turnover. This article evaluates current expatriate research studies and builds upon that
knowledge base by linking organizational support of expatriates to job satisfaction. Research has shown
that many organizations have mastery of the tenets of job satisfaction with their domestic employees;
thus, global organizations should extend similar practices to expatriate employees. Recommended
strategies include organizational practices to enhance the acculturation and adjustment of an
expatriate, thereby increasing his or her job satisfaction, ability to complete the assignment successfully,
and reducing turnover potential. (Richard D. Hays1974)

Repatriation Challenges:

Organizations often provide extensive support, including training programs, to employees whom they
send on overseas assignments, and the books that talk about how to succeed as an expatriate could fill
whole libraries. Unfortunately however, the challenges of repatriation – which almost every expatriate
must eventually deal with, and which are often equally formidable – tend to be ignored. Leaving behind
the country you’ve grown up in, with its people, language, culture, and everything else you’re so familiar
with, is obviously a challenging experience. On the other hand, many people tend to assume that
returning to your own country can only be joyous, comfortable, reassuring, and easy, like coming back
home after a tough day at work. 

However, in reality that’s not quite true. Returning to your home country after having been an
expatriate can be as difficult as the first few months of living abroad. In fact, because of the vast gap
between what people expect from repatriation and the reality of what happens when they come home,
it can sometimes be even more difficult. As painful as the experience is, suffering through homesickness,
disorientation, culture shock, and depression as an expatriate is somewhat easy to wrap your head
around. However, acknowledging and addressing the same feelings upon repatriation can be
considerably more difficult.

The challengers back from home:

What’s called ‘reverse culture shock’ is a large part of what makes repatriation so difficult, and the
phenomenon is exactly what it sounds like – the whole experience of culture shock, but as a result of
returning to a life in your own country. For most expatriates, it doesn’t take too long for their adopted
country to become home. They adapt to the local way of living, they appreciate and even take for
granted the benefits of living in their new part of the world, and dealing with the challenges becomes
second nature to them. Returning to their home country disrupts all of this and requires a lot of
adjustment. 

It isn’t even entirely a question of readjustment to what was once familiar, although this is certainly a
part of it. Places change over time, and the country an expatriate comes back to is often quite a different
place from the one they left. Expatriates come home expecting the warmth of familiarity, but instead
feel alienated and out of place, while missing the place and culture they’ve left behind. Feeling homesick
in a place you once thought of as home can be incredibly hard to come to terms with. 

In addition, being an expatriate often changes you deeply, beyond the habits and lifestyle you adopt to
deal with your surroundings. Expatriates often experience deep and lasting changes in their personalities
and attitudes, and these make it necessary to renegotiate their relationships with their home countries
and cities. 

Friends and family may often be unable to understand and accept these changes, which can make it
difficult to pick up and continue old relationships from where they were left off. Attitudes that you once
shared may seem naïve or parochial, and it may be difficult to explain why. Friends may also not be as
interested in hearing about your experiences and perspectives as you are about sharing them. 

Language can also be a problem for expatriates who return from a location where they needed to learn
the local language, especially if they used it often enough to begin thinking in it while lacking
opportunities to use their native tongue. Many expatriates also find that their native accent changes.
This is a completely normal phenomenon, but one that friends and family back home often don’t
understand and might laugh at. 

Another aspect of repatriation that is often uncomfortable and disappointing is the loss of one’s
expatriate status. As an expatriate, you almost inevitably stand out – you’re different from the locals,
and in both professional and personal settings, they may often take an interest in you that they
otherwise wouldn’t. Expatriates often get special treatment, whether overtly or subtly, and although
there are unpleasant aspects to this, it becomes an important part of your life. However, when you
return home, you’re a local, just like everyone else. If being an expatriate has become a defining aspect
of your identity, losing that aspect can be quite painful and disorienting. 

The professional world throws up its own repatriation challenges too. Expatriate professionals develop
skills and ways of working that are often unused when they return home, resulting in boredom and
frustration. Sometimes, even the smoothness with which things run – which expatriates frequently
missed while they were away – can make work dull and predictable, and expatriates miss the challenge
and excitement of working in a less organized professional world. In addition, just like friends and family,
colleagues in your home country may lack a global, international perspective, which can be quite
frustrating. 

Of course, the extent to which all of this is experienced depends on many factors, including how long
you’ve been an expatriate and how many times you have repatriated, how long you lived overseas and
the extent to which you immersed yourself in the culture, and how different the two cultures are from
each other. The circumstances of your return are also a factor – expatriates who are compelled by their
circumstances to return home often find it more difficult to come to terms with repatriation.  

Some other Causes for repatriation failure and resignation from the employees according to our
expatriate are:

a) Repatriates’ expectations: The difficult process of adaptation is influenced by different factors

including the expatriates’ expectations and the company’s perception about the international
assignment. As the most common expectations the expatriates have: I do not need professional help
with repatriation. My family will also find returning home presents few problems. Everything will be
basically the same as when I left. Everything is cleaner, better organized, safer and easier at home.
People back home are more efficient and courteous. I'll be better off financially when I return home. My
friends will be keen to hear about my exciting experiences. An employee expect some form of
promotion on returning home as I will be able to apply what I have learned abroad. Because I have been
successful in my job abroad, I expect to be equally successful on my return. My close friendships will pick
up where they left off. My organization will value my new skills, experiences and contacts and will wish
to debrief me on these. These expectations are developed long before they come back home, during
their international assignments and sometimes even before them leaving for the assignment. This can
start during the expatriates’ preparation and training; this is the time when the company has to set their
expectations connected with successful completion of the international assignment and also inform the
employees about the degree of importance of the assignment. Thus some expectations are formed and
a psychological contract has been signed; the psychological contract is defined as “an employee’s beliefs
about the obligations that exist between himself or herself and his or her organization”. So during the
repatriation process, if the employees feel that the efforts they have put into completing the
international assignment are acknowledged, their commitment to the job will stay the same or even
increase and vice versa .
b) Work-related changes: Many things have changed during the assignees stay abroad and that does
not exclude the environment of their work. There is a possibility that some of the colleagues and
managers have been fired, have retired or moved to another department; They can be the ones
responsible for fulfilling all the promises that were guaranteed when the repatriate accepted the
international assignment; Thus the chance of fulfilling the manager’s part of the psychological contract is
decreased . The best way to deal with these changes is the constant communication between the
expatriates and the home country. Due to the age of technology there are no visible problems in
keeping in touch with the companies. Through the companies’ intranet or by the use phone, e-mail,
instant messaging programs the companies are able to get informed about the expatriate’s performance
during the international assignment and the expatriates are aware of the changes and developments in
the headquarters . Another point worth mentioning is that the repatriates feel bored by their job. They
have lost the authority, status, control offered by their international assignment. However, holding a
position should have a “strict time frame” since the position can become “indefinite and lead to the
subsequent departure of the employee from the firm”; in order to keep the image of the employee
unharmed, the job should involve a real, substantial value-added contribution to the company that will,
in and of itself, offer an opportunity for the employee to maintain visibility and credibility within the
organization.

c) Socio-cultural changes: It is not only the work environment that has changed during the international
assignment but also the society and the expatriates themselves. The expatriates and their families have
to deal with all the problems connected with housing, work for the spouse and schooling for the
children. Sometimes companies help when dealing with these problems. There is a possibility of the
company renting out the expatriates’ houses during their stay abroad; another option is that the
company buys the house and resell it back to the employees when they return at a low interest rate.
Another point worth mentioning is that family and friends have changed during the expatriates’ stay
abroad and thus a feeling of alienation is created. As in the work-related changes, the same way of
dealing with the problems is suggested here - communication. By the means of Skype, Messenger,
Facebook, Twitter and other communication tools the employees and their family and friends can keep
in touch, share common moments, look through different pictures that have been uploaded; After they
come back home, instead of suffering from out-of-sight, out-of-mind syndrome, they would be much
more informed about what their friends and family have been up to.

Interview outcomes and results:

We had a brief interview to know the details of the foreign assignment and it’s know-abouts. While
conducting the interviews, there were lots of insights being provided about the expatriate. Firstly, he
discussed about how Robi recruits their expatriates through standard international recruitment process,
which ensures quality of their employees as well as eliminating the rate of failure. By this process,
expatriates are send to complete their foreign assignments representing their company. Secondly, he
discussed some details about the international assignment and the main purposes about it. They were
given a task to strengthen their supply-chain department, coordinating their external and internal works
to solve out these issues. It was not an easy task as the suppliers were unknown and the surroundings
were unfamiliar.

After the short interview, we came to know that the foreign assignment was a success. It was a very
successful assignment due to various important reasons. Robi facilitated every sort of administrative and
personal assistance of the expatriates involved in the foreign assignment. This motivated them to
pursue their challenges with more confidence and commitment. It also helped them to adapt quickly to
the unknown foreign environment. The subsidiary in which the expatriates have been sent to complete
the international assignment had friendly working environment and other employees were cooperative
enough to help them out to complete their tasks. There were excellent understanding between the
team members so each employee knew exactly what was required for them to do, which helped to
increase efficiency of their work.

There was also good understanding with the host-government officials, which proved to be vital on
reducing any type of uncertainties during the assignment. The overall economic and political situation of
the country was stable, which did not cause any negative external influences from completing the
international assignment. It helped them to decide an effective business strategy to utilize the
opportunities being present on the current market condition. So, the top management had better
control of fulfilling the purpose and integrate the expatriates in the business plan. The availability of
training and development facilities was also widely available, which helped the expatriates to transform
themselves into better employees. This also turned out to be fruitful as the expatriates identified their
skill gap and worked on it harder to overcome their limitations and excelled at their work. It provided
them the flexibility to expand their job skills as well as their talent to perform up to their standard.

Conclusion:

While completing our assignments international assignment of an expatriate, we have tried to cover all
aspects regarding the problems faced during the assignment, challenges of international assignment,
purpose of the assignment and many more. There were certain areas which was however not
highlighted due to time and resources constraint. These includes expatriate compensation and costs
associated with short-term international assignments. While taking with Primal Silva he was quite
unsatisfied with the system of Bangladeshi tax system, policy or expatriates and many more.

So, these are some of the factors that company should consider before assigning international
assignment to an expatriate.
 Index:

We are the student of East West University and as a part of BBA program we are doing
the course of International Human Resource Management. For the need of the course,
we need to conduct a survey about International Human Resource Management of
your organization. We do appreciate if you could give a few minutes of your valuable
time to us. We are going to take your suggestion and opinion, and we are ensuring that the
data will be held confidential and used only for academic purposes. Your co-operation
will be highly encouraged in this regard.

1. Name in details :

Ans:

2. Designation in your organization?

Ans:

3. What is your estimated salary you earn from your organization?

Ans:

4. Where did you go for international foreign assignment?

Ans:

5. What was the duration of your international assignment?

Ans:

6. What was the main objective or purpose of the international assignment?

Ans:

7. Is the international assignment a success or failure?

Ans:

8. What were the reasons associated with the success or failure of the assignment?

Ans: