The Role Of Non-Expatriates

The above discussion has centered on the international assignment. What has tended to be
overlooked is that a considerable amount of international business involves what can be
called ‘non-expatriates’: people who travel internationally but are not considered
expatriates, as they do not relocate to another country. These non-expatriates have been
called international business travelers58 – employees who spend a large proportion of their
time visiting foreign markets, subsidiary units, and international projects. Popular terms for
these employees include ‘road warriors’, ‘globetrotters’, ‘frequent fliers’, and
‘flexpatriates’. International travel is an essential component of their work, such as
international sales staff whose job almost totally comprises international travel; and
managers whose job entails numerous visits to international operations. International sales
representatives attend trade fairs, visit foreign agents and distributors, demonstrate new
products to potential clients, and negotiate sales contracts. Various staff will visit foreign
locations to deal with host-country government officials, alliance partners, subcontracting
firms, and foreign suppliers.
Apart from the resource implications, there are issues relating to the management of
international business travelers. DeFrank et al. identify the following factors as stressors: ●
Home and family issues – such as missing important anniversaries and school events. The
more frequent the travel, the greater the potential for family and marital relationships to be
strained.
● Work arrangements – the ‘domestic’ side of the job still has to be attended to even though
the person is traveling internationally. Modern communications allow work to accompany
the business traveler, who is often expected to remain up to date with home-office issues
while away from the office.
● Travel logistics – airline connections, hotel accommodation, and meeting schedules.
● Health concerns – poor diet, lack of physical exercise, lack of sleep, coping with jetlag,
and exposure to viruses and other health problems (e.g. Deep Vein Thrombosis from
excessive air travel).
● Host-culture issues – as international business is conducted in other cultural settings, the
person is still expected to be able to operate in unfamiliar environments and handle cultural
differences effectively. However, the limited empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that
non-expatriates do not receive the same level of cross-cultural training as expatriates – if
any
Non-expatriate business travelers also perform many of the roles of expatriates, in terms of
being agents for socialization, network builders, boundary spanners, and language nodes.
From the limited evidence available, however, it would seem that the management of staff
using these forms of arrangements falls to the functional or line managers involved rather
than the HR department as such. Possible HR strategies that could better meet the demands
of flexpatriates have been suggested by Demel and Mayrhofer.61 They suggest that the
specific situation of flexpatriates should be included in job descriptions and working
contracts and could be part of specific HRM policies for this target group. For example,
selection criteria should go beyond technical knowledge and cross-cultural skills and
include, for example, health issues such as physical fitness. The issue of working and
traveling time must also be addressed with respect to recognizing the need for the employee
to recover from international travel (adjustment to jetlag, changes in diet, etc.). If these
concerns are taken into consideration, flexpatriates can be an even more valuable
alternative solution to international mobility
 The Role Of Inpatriates
As we have outlined in Chapter 1, inpatriates are mainly distinguished from expatriates by
definition. They include international assignments of HCNs or TCNs from a foreign
location to the parent country (usually the corporate headquarters) of the MNE. Inpatriates
are:
expected to share their local contextual knowledge with headquarters staff in order to
facilitate effective corporate activities in these local markets. At the same time they are
socialized in the headquarters corporate culture and learn firm-specific routines and
behaviors that enable them to master future management tasks within the organization. As a
result, inpatriates seem to act both as knowledge senders and receivers.

Collings and Scullion63 have identified the following key drivers for recruiting and
transferring inpatriate managers:
● desire to create a global core competency and a cultural diversity of strategic perspectives
in the top management team,64 thus increasing the capability of organizations to ‘think
global and act local’
● desire to provide career opportunities for high-potential employees in host countries, i.e.
HCNs and TCNs
● the emergence of developing markets which often represent difficult locations for
expatriates in terms of quality of life and cultural adjustment.
However, the strategy of inpatriation also underlines that the strategic importance of the
headquarters is still predominant, indicating that the knowledge of the culture, the structure,
and the processes specific to the headquarters are still important requirements for vertical
career advancement. Usually, the assignment to the headquarters aims at training the
manager for a top management position back home in the foreign subsidiary. In many
MNEs, an inpatriate assignment may be a first and limited career step, reflecting a rather
ethnocentric approach. Harvey and Buckley65 conclude that, in this case, “inpatriation may
be a dangerous process”. While it might be more difficult for inpatriates than for PCNs to
realize a vertical career in the headquarters, they experience the same integration and
repatriation problems as expatriates during and after their international assignment.
Consequently, they may not receive the same return on investment for their international
assignment as expatriates. This can only be guaranteed if career opportunities for inpatriate
HCNs or TCNs exist within the headquarters and across the wider organization. In this case
inpatriation can be an important step in realizing a geocentric orientation within the MNE
and thus an ‘open sky’ (i.e. where career success is not dependent on an employee’s
nationality) for HCN and TCN managers. Based on a sample of 143 inpatriates in ten
German multinationals, Reiche, Kraimer and Harzing66 have analyzed the retention of
inpatriates. They found that trust and fit with the headquarters staff, as well as firm-specific
learning and career prospects, played an important role in ensuring retention of inpatriate
employees.
In an international comparative study Tungli and Peiperl found significant differences in the
target group of international assignments between German, British, Japanese, and US
MNEs. The authors differentiate between PCNs, TCNs, and inpatriates. The study found
that Japanese MNEs rely almost solely on PCNs for international assignments, while
British MNEs seem to systematically use different groups of employees (56 per cent PCNs,
37 per cent TCNs, and 7 per cent expatriates in the headquarters). The group of
international assignees from German MNEs consisted of 79 per cent PCNs, 12 per cent
TCNs, and 9 per cent inpatriates.67 More research on the long-term consequences of these
different practices is needed.