Towards effective management of expatriate spouses

Companies with international linkages often find it necessary to use expatriates for a variety of reasons, and the success of these expatriates is frequently critical to the success of the project on which they are working. Many of these companies could potentially benefit from including the spouse in the expatriation process. For example, about 15% of expatriate candidates were reported to have rejected a foreign assignment because of their spouse's career, and this is expected to be a growing reason for rejection, especially in North America and Western Europe. This may also be true in other parts of the world, because of an increasing number of working women, and women with careers, in all parts of the world. Substantial research has indicated that spouses are particularly important to the success of the expatriate process, but, surprisingly, there is little research that looks at the expatriate process from the spouse's viewpoint. This is especially true for spouses with a career and with male spouses; little is known of their situation and concerns. This paper draws on a series of research projects that do address the spouse's viewpoint to suggest practical means by which companies can improve the expatriation process by including the spouse.

Cross-national diversity: implications for international expansion decisions

This project examined the relationship of national diversity in team makeup on an international expansion decision. Decisions of homogeneous and nationally diverse teams were compared in an experimental study. Nationally diverse teams took significantly longer to reach decisions, and considered significantly more options than did homogeneous groups. Homogeneous, Canadian teams ranked home expansion options significantly more attractive than did nationally diverse teams. The results of the study suggest that it is important for firms to understand and use cross-national diversity when considering international expansion.

Job attitudes and absenteeism: A study in the English speaking Caribbean

This paper examines the relationships of job attitudes (facets of job satisfaction and organizational commitment) and personality characteristics to absenteeism, in five manufacturing companies in Barbados, an English-speaking Caribbean country. The relationships examined are based on well-established theories from the developed world, especially the USA. In addition, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance were measured. The results show that an employee's levels of satisfaction with co-workers, activity, responsibility, and job security, as well as loyalty to the organization, are related to absenteeism. These results are similar to those found in past research in the developed world. The most important single predictor of absence was satisfaction with co-workers. Respondents were moderate on individualism, high on uncertainty avoidance, and low on power distance. The cultural scores are used to help interpret the results. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of expanding the reach of an established theory, and relative to decreasing absenteeism in Barbados.Job satisfaction Organizational commitment Personality characteristics Cultural values Absenteeism

Large-scale multi-country experiential learning projects in IB/IM education: challenges and best practices for enhancing teaching and research

Using the X-Culture project as an example, the panel session will review challenges and best practices of using large-scale multi-country collaborative exercises and simulations to enhance learning in IB/IM courses and provide a platform for high-quality research. A total of over a thousand students from over two dozen countries participate in the project every semester. The project is administered by the instructors on a voluntary basis and participation in the project is complete free for the students and their institutions