MORGAN CHAMBERS: There are a range
of issues considered important for moving abroad
for expatriates.
Noeleen, you make a distinction between two types
of expatriates.
Can you just talk a little bit about what they are?
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Sure.
Well, there are many mobile populations now
we're beginning to realize within the research literature
indeed.
Two of the key groups are corporate-assigned or assigned
expatriates, company-backed.
And another key group are the self-initiated expatriates.
And self-initiated being those people who
take the decision themselves and fund their own stay abroad.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: Having identified the two
different groups, they do have a number of things
in common, however.
Would you like to just talk a little bit about what
those commonalities are?
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Sure.
The self-initiated expatriate and the corporate expatriate
do have some baseline commonalities.
Self-initiated corporates, people, obviously
have a motivation and a drive to move abroad
for the foreign experience.
They often have a great desire for adventure.
They like to travel, like to see different places,
and have a real drive to go abroad and move away
from their home location and go and stay in a host location.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: So your findings
have identified eight factors in the model that you've described,
and there are some subtle differences there.
Can you talk to what some of those differences
might be for the two groups?
NOELEEN DOHERTY: OK.
The range of factors that drives the motivation to move abroad
cover a large number of areas.
And that includes the location, what
location that the person is going to go to.
It includes career issues.
It includes family considerations.
And when we looked at the two different groups,
we found that for self-initiated expatriates,
they were significantly more motivated, more
influenced by the motivation around location and host
reputation.
Interestingly, that would probably be a factor of the fact
that they choose the destination themselves,
whereas company-backed expatriates are
sent to a particular location.
On the other hand, company-backed expatriates
were more driven by the career factors,
what was in it in terms of career benefit and career
development.
So they were distinguished quite clearly on those three assets.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: So the career factors,
do you want to just elaborate a little bit more
on what they are?
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Obviously, for a corporate-backed expatriate,
career drivers are one of the key major issues
that they take into consideration.
Companies actually position an international assignment
as a career benefit.
Now, there's a whole area of doubt
around whether or not that actually is
realized when they come back.
But certainly, as one of the come-ons
to take up an international assignment,
companies usually position it of a career benefit.
Self-initiated expatriates tend to
or seem to at least consider a career as part of a much more
holistic life development process
through the international assignment.
So career drivers are not the major or primary drivers
for them, rather they're a secondary driver.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: So there could be
indeed some important implications for these two
distinctions and the other factors that are involved.
What would be some of the implications to think about,
or what were some of the questions that
were raised for you as a result of the implications?
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Yes, I think there are
some very clear implications.
If we look at it from the first point,
from an organizational perspective,
there have been some doubt raised
about the utility of a self-initiated expatriates
to a corporation, particularly around the nature
of their risky behavior.
They're very driven to be mobile.
They're very self-assertive.
And so therefore, they get up and go when they need to
or when they feel like they want to.
And obviously, many companies wouldn't
want to have that level of self-driven behavior.
And therefore, they can be perceived by organizations
to be a little bit risky, possibly,
not falling within their particular HR
strategy or policy.
Organizations don't tend to have particular strategies already
developed to manage the self-initiated populations.
And so they could be perceived as a group
that organizations don't take as a part of their core employee
grouping.
And I think from an individual point of view, the issue around
what benefit they might accrue from being abroad, certainly,
there's a literature that suggests
that corporate expatriates sometimes don't always
accrue the benefit when they come home.
And it's also been shown by very few studies at the moment
that self-initiated expatriates might also suffer
from that when they repatriate.
The career capital, the skills, knowledge,
and abilities that they're able to develop while abroad might
not always be considered positively by companies when
they come back again.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: So you've identified
a number of implications there.
There's still more work to be done, more questions
to be answered.
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Certainly, there's
not a very large research base on self-initiated expatriation.
It is growing, but there are many questions
still around from a corporate point of view.
What sort of asset could they be to the company?
What sort of motivations and drivers
could the organization plan more carefully
for with respect to hiring self-initiated expatriates?
And also, how do these people integrate
with the corporate employees that they
are existing employees.
From an individual point of view,
we still know very little about what drives people.
We still don't know what the differences are between people
moving from developed to developing, or developing
to developing countries from a self-initiated point of view.
And also from an individual level,
what sort of career capital they accrue,
what sort of skills, knowledge, and abilities
they are able to gather and develop
while they are having a foreign experience.
And how they can then use those in a career sense as well.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: So you started to answer
some of these questions for human resources
professionals and organizations, but clearly still more issues
are raised.
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Yes, many more issues,
particularly from a corporate point of view
and also from an individual point of view.
MORGAN CHAMBERS: Thank you, Noeleen.
NOELEEN DOHERTY: Thank you.