Research evidence suggests that the great majority of western Essay

Research evidence suggests that the great majority of western multi-national companies decide against sending female expatriates to non-western countries. Evalu - Essay Example marily local nationals, and therefore must closely adhere to local norms on hiring--or not hiring--female managers, transnational corporations are not similarly limited; because the corporate culture of transnational firms is not coincident with the local culture of any particular country, transnationals have greater flexibility in defining selection and promotion criteria that best fit the firms needs rather than those that most closely mimic the historic patterns of a particular country’ (Adler, 1993, 4). The above differentiation between domestic companies and transnationals regarding the criteria set for the hiring of managerial staff has a significant value for the case of expatriates. Because transnationals, as explained above, are free to decide on their staff (in terms of not being ‘engaged’ by the local cultural demands) their decision on hiring expatriates cannot be examined as of its reasoning. Moreover, in order to understand the position and the role of expatriates we should refer to the following categories of foreign assignments as they have been presented by Bruning et al. (2005). More specifically, in accordance with the above researchers the ‘various types of foreign assignments include: a) Relocating an employee and family to a target country (expatriates); b) Developing management staff from the local country (inpatriates), or c) Utilizing employees in frequent short-terre assignments (flexpatriates) to transfer area-specific knowledge’ (Bruning et al., 2005, 21). According to a definition given by Gentry et al. (2001, 369) ‘business expatriates are sojourners sent to a foreign country by multinationals with the intent to control the company operations and to provide technical and administrative services’. The above descriptions of the role of expatriates are useful in order to understand their responsibilities but also their rights when deciding to be ‘engaged’ on this specific type of employment. At a first level, it has