A knowledge transfer perspective of strategic assignment purposes and their path-dependent outcomes

Abstract

Our research not only addresses the strategic purposes of expatriate assignments within multinational corporations but, unlike most earlier studies, extends the investigation to include their path-dependent outcomes. Adopting a knowledge transfer perspective we first re-define the principal assignment purpose categories of Edström and Galbraith (1977a) as business applications, organization applications and expatriate learning. These purpose categories are then conceptually related in terms of a four-part typological matrix based on individual-level knowledge-flow direction and role focus. Following a review of prior assignment purpose studies we posit that strategic expatriate assignment purposes should be considered not in isolation but relative to their potential outcomes. Adopting a single-case research design with multi-method data collection, we demonstrate the emergent nature of strategic assignment outcomes. It is shown for our transnational case organization that knowledge acquisition or learning by expatriates is an underestimated strategic assignment outcome, more so than either business or organization-related knowledge applications.

Keywords:

• Expatriates
• knowledge
• learning
• multinational corporations
• strategic IHRM

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Ericsson Australia for their willing participation in this study. Our special thanks are extended to Rebecca Power and Lawrie Mann for their managerial approval and encouragement, respectively, and to Kelly Kotsakis and her replacement Kylie Hawker for their invaluable logistical guidance.

Notes

J. Barry Hocking, Department of Management, University of Melbourne, 5th Floor, Babel Building, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (tel:[phone]; fax:[phone]; e-mail: [email protected]). Michelle Brown (contact for correspondence), Department of Management, University of Melbourne, 5th Floor, Babel Building, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (tel:[phone]; fax:[phone]; e-mail:[email protected]). Anne-Wil Harzing, Department of Management, University of Melbourne, 5th Floor, Babel Building, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (tel:[phone]; fax:[phone]; e-mail:[email protected]).

1 In the operationalization of our empirical constructs we found it necessary to make a post hoc amendment to the theoretically based business applications scale of Figure 2, for both strategic assignment purposes and outcomes. Principal component factor analyses, confirmed by inter-item correlations, indicated an evenly shared loading of the co-ordination/networking item between organization applications and, unexpectedly from a theoretical perspective (see Figure 2), business applications. For the strategic assignment purposes construct, for example, the respective varimax loadings were .58 and .56. In situations like this, where an item loads evenly onto more than one factor, its inclusion in both scales has been advocated (De Vaus, 1995). As the potentially exaggerated correlation of variables was not an issue, we judiciously adopted this practice and in each case found an alpha reliability enhancement of up to .11. Further, there was a qualitative reassurance from our interview data that expatriate networking is a prominent business as well as organization-related role activity.