Task Performance of Expatriates Based on Emissary Model of Global Human Resource Strategy

Abstract

This survey study examined predictors of the task performance of Korean expatriates in India, while considering their globalization status. Task performance was significantly influenced by opportunities for career development and satisfaction of global human resource management practices. However, cultural intelligence, family adjustment and willingness to accept a global assignment did not significantly influence task performance. Using an emissary model of international HR strategy that conforms to Korean companies’ current globalization status, we explain these results and also suggest valuable insights to fast-growing companies from newly industrializing or emerging economies so that they can develop a relevant strategy for improving task performance of their expatriates.

Keywords

Expatriates careers in an international context international assignments task performance emissary model

Introduction

Since globalization became an inevitable phenomenon, maintaining global competitiveness has been a key issue for the business world. Multinational corporations (MNCs) face the daunting task of updating themselves with various information and the latest technologies to attain sustainable competitive advantage. There is no universal approach suiting all MNCs, but many researchers agree that effective expatriate management can create a competitive advantage for global operations, thus their international experiences have been highlighted as a critical asset (Black et al., 1999; Stahl et al., 2009; Tung, 1998).

While companies are becoming more cautious in selecting their employees for the expatriation, candidates are also serious to accept international assignments because the jobs would affect various facets of their individual lives. Under these challenges, the issues related to the successful international assignment has been an important topic for international human resource management (IHRM). While the extant research predominantly focuses on European or North American expatriates, not much is known about expatriates from budding or newly industrialized economies (NIEs) employed in less lower or upper-middle income countries. Notably, the number of MNCs from the latter blend is now burgeoning. It is lamentable that the expatriates from the latter category are found wanting in the work know-how and practice on the transnational functioning. This adversely impedes their career path (Baruch & Altman, 2002). As a result, their expatriates are often struggling with career opportunities and risks. For instance, the notion of boundaryless or protein career which highlights individualistic values is relevant to expatriates from North America to equip them as a competent global manager, but it is likely to be discouraged by the management of Asian companies because they worry that the notion may influence their expatriates to pursue more individual career advancement than organizational goals.

This study focused on Korean expatriates in India, which covers both NIE and emerging economies, and sought to address the predictors of their task performance in order to fill the research gap by examining an underrepresented sample. Thus, the results might be added to the existing body of knowledge and also propose more relevant IHRM strategies for MNCs from emerging economies. The top three reasons for this choice are as follows.

First, Korean MNCs, notwithstanding their less international experience, have more recently attained transnational presence in no time. This has had significant implications for up-and-coming companies in budding economies.

Second, India has dynamic business environments. India was ranked on the third most attractive destination of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the World Investment Report of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2017), but also stood at one of the lowest (130th) on the World Bank (2017)’s ease of doing business index. India is known for underdeveloped infrastructure, sophisticated marketing channels and logistics, different provincial languages, numerous rules and regulations, and frequent industrial disputes. In addition, her cultural diversity and prominent economic development among emerging countries render IHRM in India as a momentous research area.

Third, Korean companies have become important players in the Indian market. For example, Samsung Electronics has been taking lead in smartphones, LG Electronics has maintained the lead in consumer durables (Cho, 2013; The Economic Times, 2017) and Hyundai Motors has become the largest exporter of passenger cars from India (Hyundai Motor Company, 2017). These achievements could not be explained without highlighting their expatriates’ high-task performance. Despite the remarkable success, most Korean expatriates do not consider India as an attractive destination (Kim & Tung, 2013), which draws more attention to explore the case.

Therefore, the Korean expatriates’ attitude and the unique working conditions and situations merit research attention.

Theory and Hypotheses

Due to the dynamic nature of the foreign environment, the performance of expatriates is influenced by various factors. Tung (1981) grouped these factors into four general areas that are commonly agreed as the determinants of success or failure on the job for expatriates: technical competence on the job, personal traits or relational abilities that enable expatriates to deal with work associates as well as customers, adjustment ability to deal with different environmental variables from accustomed domestic political, legal and socioeconomic structures, and the ability of the expatriate’ family to adjust living in a foreign environment. Many researchers deepened the knowledge of the above mention variables or extended further to explain a wide range of issues around the performance effect on IHRM.

Job performance is a multidimensional construct that can be divided into task performance and contextual performance (Kraimer & Wayne, 2004). It is related to behavior with an evaluative component that can be positive or negative for organizational effectiveness (Motowildo et al., 1997), thus the performance of expatriates should be understood in the organizational context. Companies send their expatriates according to their IHRM strategy and the expatriates usually work in accordance with the strategy. Heenan and Perlmutter (1979) explained four IHRM strategic options according to the level of a firm’s internationalization status: ethnocentric, polycentric, regioncentric and geocentric orientation, which helps us to see how MNCs choose their candidates for international assignments based on their internationalization status. However, this classification focused mainly on expatriation and ignored the significance of HR issues in repatriation or relocation as parts of international human resource management (Dickmann & Baruch, 2011). Expatriates can contribute more to the whole organization when they repatriate or relocate successfully (Lazarova & Tarique, 2005). Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) proposed a similar stages-based model that contains four strategic options by managing the pressures of local responsiveness and global integration. They described international (low on integration and responsiveness), global (low on responsiveness, high on integration), multinational (high on responsiveness, low on integration) and transnational (high on both) strategic options, which help us to apply human resource management strategy accordingly, but missed many actual working cases that many MNCs aim to become ‘transnational,’ but, in reality, most of them operate their global operations while locating their headquarters in the mother company’s country, not truly operate across borders (Baruch, 2004).

While these frameworks focus on international staffing in a way of control or coordination of an MNC, Baruch and Altman (2002) suggested a taxonomy according to the expatriation and repatriation policies and practices at the organizational operational level:

The global: This is the ‘archetype’ large global MNC, with an established reputation in global operations. Because the company has a comprehensive set of procedures and practices in expatriation management as an integral part of HRM, expatriation is an essential part of the normal career path. Thus, its employees would expect expatriation to be at the core of their professional and managerial career.

The emissary: The model fits companies operating globally but rooted in a particular home culture which serves as its repository ideology, power base and expatriate source. The companies expect their expatriates to represent and control operations in subsidiaries. Thus, its employees are expected to accept an expatriate role in a way of expressing their commitment and loyalty to the firm.

Peripheral: This model fits companies operating in peripheral geographies, which local markets are insufficient for their growth and globalization is an inexorable expansion strategy. Thus, its employees often perceive expatriation as the desired reward at work to gain experience of ‘the big world’ as well as a sought-after career option.

Professional: This model fits companies whose goal is concentrating on home-country strengths and keeping their people within specific geographical borders. Thus, they prefer to use external people to operate their global operations based on buying in knowledge and expertise, and to rely on outsourcing the expatriation process.

Expedient: This option is often seen in newcomers to the global scene, which lack global experience and basic resources to manage expatriation of their employees. They are likely to copy from other companies’ expatriation policies and practices, and also follow an ad-hoc, pragmatic and situation-specific approach, more of a ‘mixed bag’ than a systematic strategy.

Each option implies a different organizational approach to the management of careers, which represents the organizational culture and expatriation strategy, thus clarifying the psychological contract between the expatriate and the organization (Baruch, 2004). This clarity is very helpful for expatriates to recognize the expectation of the organization and prepare for their international assignments accordingly.

Since this taxonomy is more relevant to the companies at a different level of globalization as well as both developed and emerging countries (Altman & Baruch, 2012), this study adopted it. The majority of Korean companies in India could fit Peripheral or the Emissary model because of their lack of global experience and Korean style of managerial practices, however, they still show some characteristics of the Expedient’s case-by-case approach to cope with diverse Indian environments. Thus, this study only focused on task performance in terms of the expatriate’s performance on meeting job objectives and technical aspects of the job while examining these different operational levels.

Willingness to Accept an International Assignment

Transnational projects have been viewed as a means to develop an expatriates’ career (Tung, 1998). A variety of lucrative monetary benefits and high social rank encourage prospective candidates to voluntarily apply for the expatriate position. But it may not be always promising. For example, if the host country has an unstable political situation, insecurity and tough working condition, the organization would have difficulties in finding volunteers. On the other hand, even though the host country does not have that kind of hardship, but a company emphasizes more on the domestic operation and the home office always maintains superior status, its employees would be hesitant to apply or accept expatriation. Because of the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome, they do not want to miss chances for career development in their parent organizations (Tung, 1988). If anyone accepts it despite these disadvantages, his or her acceptance or willingness for the position is often seen as expressing their commitment or loyalty to the organization. Thus, expatriates consider psychological contracts as a significant matter when they are considering uprooting their lives and families to move to another country which exposes them to more risks than on home soil (Haslberger & Brewster, 2008). For the Global case, the organization sees international experience an asset as well as a requirement, and employees willingly take expatriation. Baruch (2004) explained that in the Global option, the psychological contract is open ended and clearly defined, for the Professional option is transactional (market based), and for the Emissary option, it is relational, underscoring the mutual commitment of employee and organization. Kim and Tung (2013) found that Korean expatriates tend to accept assignments to a lesser preferable destination like India due to their Confucian values of unflinching organizational commitment and rigid collectivistic culture. Furthermore, these values help them in endeavouring to cope with the troubles of work-life balance and achieve the goal that their organization assigned. Understandably, research suggests that expatriates embodying higher levels of commitment positively cope with challenges and are driven to fulfil their work duties to the best satisfaction of their headquarters (Kraimer & Wayne, 2004). Consistent with the above discussion, we hypothesize the following.

Hypothesis 1: Willingness to accept a global assignment will be significantly related to an expatriate’s task performance.

Cultural Intelligence

International assignment exposes expatriates to foreign cultures, where social, economic and legal systems significantly differ from their home country. Cultural intelligence reflects knowledge of the norms, practices and conventions in different cultures as well as competence to deal effectively with people from a different cultural background and understanding (Earley & Ang, 2003).

It enables expatriates to understand and enact role expectations in a manner that is culturally sensitive and appropriate, thus affecting task performance (Ang et al., 2007; Harrison & Shaffer, 2005). In the same vein, well adjusted to a different culture was proved to be the main factor of job performance (Kraimer et al., 2001). Whereas, other studies have a different result that cultural intelligence did not significantly associate with task performance but only contextual performance (Kraimer & Wayne, 2004; Rose et al., 2010).

However, as we mentioned earlier, expatriates of an Emissary company want to be representatives of their home culture rather than adjust to local culture; local employees of an Emissary company make an effort to resemble the home country’s work attitude and behaviour (Baruch & Altman, 2002). Though it may look less necessary for an expatriate of an Emissary company to learn the local culture, there is still significant importance to understand the local culture. For instance, the knowledge and ability to utilize cultural similarities and differences can help expatriates to lead local employees in a more familiar way to follow them and expect more favourable cooperation from them.

Thus, we hypothesize the following.

Hypothesis 2: Cultural intelligence has a significant relationship with an expatriate’s task performance.

Satisfaction of IHRM Practices

There has been a controversial issue on whether job satisfaction directly influences or is influenced by high performance. However, the positive relationship between the two is generally agreed (Imran et al., 2014; Schleicher et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2012). Due to dynamics of IHRM, job satisfaction of expatriates has been measured by various aspects such as distinctiveness of the post assumed, intra-organizational communication, the extent to which the family and the company are supportive, involvement in decision-making and skill diversity (Ali et al., 2003; Cox, 2004; Li & Tse, 1998), and these aspects also shape IHRM programmes and policies. Thus, companies can examine the relevancy of their IHRM programmes and policies in the light of job satisfaction. On the other hand, they also have to observe their expatriates whether they have inaccurate or unrealistic expectations, which may cause dissatisfaction with their jobs (Kim & Tung, 2013). If a company provides relevant IHRM policies that meet the expectations of her expatriates, it will bring high performance as a result (Black & Gregersen, 1991). Thus, this study hypothesizes the following.

Hypothesis 3: Satisfaction of IHRM practices can increase an expatriate’s task performance.

Career Development Opportunities

Some major reasons for employees accepting the expatriation are their personal and professional development, and career advancement (Baruch & Altman, 2002; Black et al., 1999; Suutari & Brewster, 2003; Tung, 1998). Expatriates’ careers can be considered from the perspective of boundaryless careers because they obtained new competencies that were not available at home and had to view their career as being independent of organizational boundaries as global managers (Tung, 1998). On the other hand, expatriates also worry about a negative career move because of the ignorance and lost promotion opportunity while they are away (Tung, 1988). Thus, expatriates enter the process of expatriation with a certain psychological contract (Haslberger & Brewster, 2008) and, once they accept the assignment, they feel an obligation to complete the tasks while expecting positive career outcomes (Kim & Slocum, 2008). For both the Global and the Professional options, the boundaryless concept of becoming a competent manager in a transnational context and professional development encourages expatriation as an important opportunity in career development. However, in the Emissary option, expatriates want to make sure of their career advancement and security in the home organization.

It is common that if expatriates perceive their company’s support on their career development, they will more committed to the parent company and intend to complete the assignment in a better way (Kraimer & Wayne, 2004), and the career development opportunity positively relates to expatriate performance (Van der Heijden et al., 2009). But, if their career prospects are not viable in the organization, they feel discouraged and may leave the organization and search for an alternative job opportunity outside the current organization (Selmer, 1999).

Accordingly, this study proposes the following.

Hypothesis 4: Career development opportunity can increase an expatriate’s task performance.

Family Adjustment

Since expatriation often requires uprooting their families and makes an adjustment to foreign environments together, the family situation contributes to the success or failure on the job for expatriates (Arthur & Bennett, 1995; Tung, 1981). For example, there are numerous areas of adjustment, such as, each family member’s adjustment to their work, school and social life, adaptation to new roles and children’s education. Due to a spillover or crossover process, partner or families’ adjustment can affect expatriates’ job performance (Lazarova et al., 2010). Each one’s satisfaction, happiness, and cheerful spirit will influence others to result in a positive outcome, whereas the opposite case will produce a negative effect. Accordingly, we postulate the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 5: Family adjustment can increase an expatriate’s task performance.

Methodology

We developed the questionnaire for this study after systematically reviewing similar tools used by various other studies (Ali et al., 2003; Kraimer & Wayne, 2004; Rose et al., 2010; Tung, 1998). Back translation technique was used to translate the questionnaire into Korean. The questionnaires were administered to 150 Korean expatriates functioning in India from July 2011 to February 2012. The number of returned questionnaires was 129—out of which 123 were found analyzable, which is a good enough sample size to do regression analyses on the determinants of task performance. The targeted sample was working in industrial sectors such as automotive, electronics, petrochemical, services, textile, trade and transportation.

Measures

Independent Variables

We adopted five items concerning willingness towards global assignment from Tung’s (1998) scale. This measured the extent to which the respondents willingly accepted a global project. An example item from the instrument is ‘I will accept anywhere that my company asks me to go’. The reliability of this scale, Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.87.

Three items concerning cultural intelligence were based on Rose et al. (2010). These were designed to suit the Korean expatriates’ context for measuring cross-cultural knowledge and sensitivity. A sample item from the scale is ‘I am aware that Indian cultural values are different from mine’. The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale was 0.65.

Three items related to satisfaction of IHRM practices were based on Tung (1997) and designed to suit the Korean expatriates’ context. An example of the instrument is ‘My work is well recognized by my parent company’. The Cronbach’s alpha of this instrument was 0.68.

Three items concerning career development opportunity were based on Tung (1998) and measured by participants’ perception of their international assignment as a global competency development opportunity. A sample item from the scale is ‘International experience is a competitive asset that makes me more valuable to the external labour market’. The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale was 0.71.

Three items related to family issues were adopted from Ali et al. (2003) and measured the respondents’ concerns about family issues. A sample item from the scale is ‘My family’s adjustment to Indian culture remains as one of my major concerns’. The reliability of this scale, Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.64.

All of the above-mentioned independent variables used a five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Dependent Variables

We adopted four items concerning Task performance from Kraimer and Wayne (2004) to measure the extent to which participants evaluated their task performance with regard to the accomplishment of job objectives, meeting performance standards and expectations, technical competence and overall job performance. An example of the scale is ‘Overall, I have fulfilled the requirements of my job successfully’. The reliability of this scale, Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.74.

Task performance was gauged using the above mentioned five-point scale.

Control Variables

Extant research bears testimony to the fact that expatriates’ attitudes and behaviours are significantly impacted by demographic factors such as age, position level, current assignment experience (Bal et al., 2011; Kim & Slocum, 2008; Stahl et al., 2009). We found that age and position levels were strongly correlated (r = 0.65) mainly because of the seniority system in Korean companies. Therefore, this study used only position level and current assignment tenure as control variables.

Position level indicates the hierarchical rank of the employee in India. We dummy-coded the level with 0 indicating lower-level managers (lower than director level) and 1 indicating higher-level managers (director and above level). The higher-level managers (69.1% of the respondents) are top-level managers such as managing directors or country heads who oversee overall operations rather than functional areas. The lower-level managers (30.9% of the respondents) are usually working under the higher-level managers and occupy titles as department heads or general managers.

Current assignment tenure was also dummy-coded with 0 for less than three years and 1 for three years or more so that the effect of longer than average three-year tenure period could be clearly found.

Data Analysis

We used Cronbach’s alpha tests to examine reliability and factor analysis to determine the validity of this research (see Table 1). The values of Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.64 to 0.87 proved the internal consistency of the instruments. Notably, this is considered acceptable for this exploratory study. And principal component analysis, Varimax rotation method and cut-off Eigenvalue of 1.0 were adopted for factor analysis. It was found that cumulatively 67 per cent of the variance in task performance was explained by the hypothesized predictors. For meeting the statistical condition of these two analyses, we removed one item from family issues, three items from cultural intelligence, three items from the satisfaction of IHRM practices, and two items from career development opportunity.

Preliminary analyses examined the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations among the study variables. As the rage of variance inflation factor (VIF) was 0.54–1.86, multicollinearity effect is found to be not significantly problematic. Finally, we tested our hypotheses using hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

Table 1.

The Combined Results of Factor and Reliability Analysis

Scale Item	WA	CI	SI	CD	FA	TP	Reliability
I will accept the work abroad even if the country of assignment may not contribute to my career advancement.	0.85						0.87
I will accept the work abroad even if the country of assignment may not have much tourist attraction	0.84
I will accept the work abroad even though the working condition is very tough.	0.81
I will accept international assignments to countries/regions that are politically unstable and insecure.	0.73
I will accept anywhere that my company asks me to go.	0.70
I am aware that Indian cultural values are different from mine.		0.77					0.65
I have gotten used to the legal and economic systems of India.		0.65
I have some Indian friends with whom I can seek honest opinion/advice or help.		0.51
My work is well recognized by my parent company.			0.77				0.68
I am satisfied with the financial packages accorded to my designation in India.			0.71
Parent company gives me the authority to decide on many critical issues in India.			0.66
Overseas assignments bring personal development and career enhancement in and out of the current organization.				0.77			0.71
International experience is a competitive asset that makes me more valuable to the external labour market.				0.76
This international assignment enables me to develop a global mindset.				0.66
My spouse is happy to live in India.					0.76		0.64
My children are doing well in school in India.					0.69
My family’s adjustment to Indian culture remains as one of my major concerns (R).					0.69
I meet the job objectives set by the company.						0.78	0.74
Overall, I have fulfilled the requirements of my l job successfully.						0.68
I encounter difficulties in meeting performance standards and expectations related to my job (R).						0.68
I am technically competent to undertake my job						0.51

Source: The authors.

Notes: WA (willingness to accept an international assignment), CI (cultural intelligence), SI (satisfaction of IHRM practices),

CD (career development opportunities), FA (family adjustment), TP (task performance).

Loadings less than 0.48 are not reported.

Findings

Profile of Korean Expatriates

Table 2 portrays the demographic characteristics of the sample. Some facets of the results are noteworthy.

Table 2.

Demographic Profile of Respondents

Gender		Male (98.4%); female (1.6%)
Age		20–29 years (8.9%); 30–39 years (17.1%): 40–49 years (27.6%); 50–59 years (39.0%); 60 years and above (7.3%)
Educational background		High school (8.1%); vocational college graduate (1.6%); undergraduate (74.1%); post-graduate (15.4%); doctorate (0.8%)
Position level	Korea	< Manager (13.8%); manager–general manager (43.9%); director–executive director (42.3%) Manager–general manager (30.9%); director–managing director (69.1%)
Position level	India
Functional areas		General management/administration (61.0%); production/operation (19.5%); R&D/quality control (1.6%); finance (9.8%); sales/marketing (8.1%)
Organizational tenure		< 3 years (11.4%); 3–10 years (20.3%); > 10 years (68.3%)
Tenure in India		< 1 year (20.3%); 1–2 years (13.8%); 2–3 years (22.8%); 3–4 years (6.5%); 4–5 years (10.6%); > 5 years (26%)
Marital status		Not married (14.6%); married (85.4%)

Source: The authors.

To begin with, there were only two female respondents working as interpreters. And both of them were single. It supports an The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report that Korea had the lowest female workforce involvement among OECD countries (55% as opposed to the OECD standard of 65%) and that the involvement drastically declines after marriage (OECD, 2013). The gender pay gap stood at 39 per cent, which was the highest among OECD countries and 90 per cent of the women were not in managerial positions. The report also revealed that Korean men spent just 45 minutes on housework per week, which means there is little flexibility for Korean housewives who wish to work and raise a family. These trends have been continued for the last 20 years and may not be changed if work cultures involve long working hours and socializing after work continues.

Second, most Korean expatriates in this sample (85.4%) were married. Though other options were available on the questionnaire, the respondents marked only married or not married. And 66.6 per cent of the respondents were the age of 40–59. While considering the average age for a Korean man to get married was 29.7 years in 2000 (Lee, 2012), the majority might have teen-aged children or above and were concerned about their children’s education due to the very competitive Korean education system.

Third, 90 per cent of the respondents were university degree or further higher degree holders. And 69.1 per cent of them held positions at or above the director level on the current assignments. Thus, most of the respondents were well educated and participated in higher levels of decision making.

Fourth, most Korean companies hired expatriates with more than 10 years of work experience in the parent companies (68.3%), and the expatriates normally served for three years. However, the tenure in India often gets extended due to longer adjustment time.

Factors Influencing Task Performance

The results of correlation analysis (see Table 3) showed current assignment tenure was significantly associated with the satisfaction of IHRM practices (r = 0.42), cultural intelligence (r = 0.28), family adjustment (r = 0.18) and task performance (r = 0.18) at the p < .05 level even though it is a control variable. This shows that longer tenure may help them better perform at work.

Second, cultural intelligence (r = 0.19), satisfaction of IHRM practices (r = 0.47), and career development opportunities (r = 0.40) and family adjustment (r = 0.20) were significantly associated with task performance. These associations were further investigated by the following regression analyses.

Third, with regard to correlations among independent variables, they showed weak or moderate positive correlations except for the association between willingness to accept a global assignment and family adjustment (r = –0.02).

Table 4 presents the factors impacting Korean expatriates’ task performance who are still engaged in their global projects. First of all, both variables, cultural intelligence and willingness to accept an international assignment, were not significantly related to task performance (p < 0.05). These results rejected both Hypothesis 1 and 2.

Table 3.

Results of Correlation Analysis

	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Position level	0.69	0.47	–
2. Current assignment tenure	0.43	0.50	*0.40	–
3. Willingness to accept an international assignment	3.28	0.77	0.10	0.03	–
4. Cultural intelligence	3.12	0.76	*0.20	*0.28	*0.39	–
5. Satisfaction of IHRM practices	3.43	0.70	*0.38	*0.42	*0.32	*0.35	–
6. Career development opportunities	3.70	0.70	*–0.23	0.13	*0.24	*0.24	*0.40	–
7. Family adjustment	3.04	0.46	0.08	*0.18	–0.02	*0.26	*0.30	*0.23	–
8. Task performance	3.57	0.67	0.09	*0.18	0.11	*0.19	*0.47	*0.40	*0.20	–

Source: The authors.

Note: ^*Correlations of 0.18 and higher are significant at the p < .05 level.

Table 4.

Results of Regression Analysis

	Dependent Variable: Task Performance
	Model 1	Model 2
Step 1
Position level	0.02	0.02
Current assignment tenure	0.17	–0.03
Step 2
Willingness to accept an international assignment		–0.09
Cultural intelligence		0.03
Satisfaction of IHRM practices		*0.38
Career development opportunities		*0.26
Family adjustment		0.02
R²	0.03	0.28
Adjusted R²	0.01	0.24
F	1.88	6.30
p-value	0.16	*0.00

Source: The authors.

Notes: n = 123. Df = 122. Values are standardized coefficient. *Significance at p < .05.

Next, the satisfaction of IHRM practices was significantly and positively related to task performance. This shows that satisfaction could engender task performance. Hence, Hypothesis 3 was accepted.

Third, career development opportunities were also found to be positively related to task performance. Therefore, Hypothesis 4 was accepted.

Finally, family adjustment did not have a significant relationship with task performance. Thus, Hypothesis 5 was rejected.

Discussion

This study presented various factors on the task performance of Korean expatriates in India. To begin with, the Korean expatriates having Confucius’s cultural background where loyalty to the organization is common are often under cultural pressure to accept even the least preferred international assignment (Kim & Tung, 2013). For Korean work culture, an employee’s refusal of international assignment may bring a very negative impression to the other members in the organization and the acceptance was influenced by more cultural obligation rather than their willingness. Dickmann and Baruch (2011) described the functioning of Korean MNCs using an emissary model typified by values such as duty-orientation, commitment and loyalty. This explains the inconsequential relationship between the willingness to accept a global assignment and task performance. However, Korean companies should develop appropriate HR policies and programmes to appreciate their sacrifice or commitment and try to utilize them to pull the expatriates’ high performance. Because, in the case of a global or professional option, a high-performance effort at the subsidiaries is common as they want to develop global careers through the assignment (Baruch & Altman, 2002). Therefore, appropriate motivation measures are needed to help them to realize the significant aspects of the assignment. It is high time for them to introduce the boundaryless career concept into their IHRM practices and give more opportunities for their expatriates to develop their global competencies or work experience by achieving high performance.

Next, the main reason for the insignificant relationship between cultural intelligence and task performance can be explained by a lack of motivation to adjust to local culture. A growing number of Korean restaurants, churches, and social or sports clubs cater to Korean expatriates’ social needs as well as after office-hour activities. Korean expatriates often mingle with other Koreans and barely interact with locals (Kim & Tung, 2013). The majority of respondents are in high-level decision-making positions where they have to lead local employees. This result is identical to the Emissary model which does not stress on cross-cultural integration highly. In the Global, the Professional as well as the Peripheral options, the expatriates eager to experience the host culture and gain global competence out of it, but in the Emissary option, expatriates may be expected to contribute a few years’ services for the sake of the company (Baruch, 2004). This lack of motivation and cultural intelligence must be a disadvantage in the long run or near future. The companies should develop IHRM programmes that enable them to acquire local knowledge and social capital during their tenure period and transfer those assets to their successors (Stahl et al., 2009).

Third, this study asserts that career development opportunities significantly increased task performance, which can be also explained by the above-mentioned Confucius Asian values. However, the dynamic nature of the global business environment such as economic, societal, technological changes causes more difficulties in meeting the career advancement expectation (Lazarova & Tarique, 2005; Stahl et al., 2009). As we acknowledged that several studies suggested a boundaryless career that could develop and provide more career development inside the organization can be a more practical suggestion to Korean MNCs having Confucius’s cultural heritage which values more relational bondage and long-term commitment. Thus, this study proposes for the MNCs to develop more boundary-expansion career development opportunities within the organization.

Fourth, this study confirmed that the satisfaction of IHRM practices can increase an expatriate’s task performance. Comparing other assignments, international assignments have more ambiguity and higher risks, thus, stable and fulfilling psychological contracts can increase levels of trust and organizational commitment and result in high performance (Haslberger & Brewster, 2009). The IHRM policies should recognize an expatriate’s contribution and clearly show the support necessary for achieving their assignment goals. The expatriates appreciated the autonomy to decide on many critical issues (Kim & Tung, 2013) as well as recognition from their parent company because mutual commitment is more common in the emissary model (Baruch & Altman, 2002). In addition to these job enrichment practices, the financial packages should be designed according to their elevated designation in Indian assignments to meet their higher social status.

Fifth, even though this study did not prove a significant relationship between family adjustment and task performance, we should take note that family concerns are one of the major reasons for premature return intention (Kim & Slocum, 2008). Korean expatriates have a strong tendency to complete their assignments though their family lives may suffer (Kim & Park, 2003). The negative association between willingness to accept the international assignment and family adjustment revealed that some respondents even accepted the assignment in spite of families’ inability. In the Emissary option, though many expatriates go abroad out of obligation, not due to a search of global experience, they need much individual support for cultural adjustments and family dynamics (Dickmann & Baruch, 2011). Korean companies should be cognizant of the fact that family management is associated with effective performance (Arthur & Bennett, 1995) and expatriate satisfaction (Lazarova et al., 2010; Tung, 1987).

Conclusion

As a result of an increasingly globalized world, the expatriation of employees is one of the most common practices among growing companies. As the companies’ success depends on the performance of expatriates, developing a relevant IHRM strategy for especially those who are from NIEs or emerging countries assigned to emerging nations became an urgent matter. Due to the lack of global experience and basic resources, they try to imitate global companies from western developed countries. But these efforts often result in negative consequences due to ignoring their current globalization status. As most of the current Korean companies’ globalization status is best explained by the Emissary model (Baruch & Altman, 2002), reflecting the results of this study to the light of the model will be more useful. This study found that satisfaction of IHRM practices and career development opportunities predicted the high performance of their expatriates. These two factors should be taken as primary considerations to improve the task performance of expatriates, which secure an MNC’s global competitiveness.

Many companies in NIEs or emerging countries can match their current organizational approach to the management of careers and the meaning of international assignments with the five options such as the Global, the Emissary, the Professional, the Peripheral, and the Expedient. The Global option sounds like the best approach and ideal situation for those who pursue globalization. However, it is likely to be a utopian model for those who lack global experience and enough resources. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses, and the companies must practically examine their HR practices to achieve the strategic alignment of the respective global business strategy. But all options need to treat an expatriate assignment as a means to identify as a high-potential leadership for the organization as well as a career development opportunity.

Thus, our research extends the conceptual and practical knowledge of IHRM, particularly to those organizations seeking a relevant framework for expatriate development in MNCs from rising economies. The MNCs usually lack human resources and global experience, which expose themselves as vulnerable in the global business arena. Without assessing their standpoint, merely imitating the characteristics of the Global archetype may mislead them to discourage their committed expatriates with their ill-prepared IHRM policies and programmes. This study reveals Korean MNCs’ standpoint and suggests some practical implications.

Practical Implications

Regular feedback on career development through international assignments by parent companies will improve both task performance and satisfaction of IHRM practices. This is because expatriates, especially those pursuing career advancement within the organization, appreciate the feedback as an act of recognition. While considering Korea’s Confucius background and the Emissary approach, senior management in the home country should take the initiative of expatriate management and recognize their employees’ global experience. Their recognition surely motivates young expatriates to perform well even though they cannot guarantee promotion upon repatriation. The encouraging news is that Hyundai motors promoted a record number (19.6%) of their expatriates to executive posts at the end of 2013 (Kim, 2013), which will impact their expatriates’ task performance.

Next, work culture change is required to embrace local employees in their subsidiaries. For example, in the Emissary case, many Korean companies have been sending key local employees to Korea to learn Korean working culture and continuing to emphasize behavioral resemblance to Korean expatriates. And Korean expatriates occupy key or decision-making positions. These facts hinder local employees from pursuing their career advancement within the organization. The MNCs should provide a room for them to have hope and grow in the organization

Finally, expatriation is not only for the career development opportunity. Thus, the companies should also utilize their expatriates’ willingness and enthusiasm toward global leadership development which closely related to its IHRM strategy.

Limitations and Suggestions

One noticeable constraint of our study is the relatively small sample size. However, this sample size was found to be large enough for doing regression analyses. Second, this study is only focused on Korean expatriates. It will be highly beneficial if the results of this study are compared with or contrast to the performance of Western expatriates or expatriates from other Asian multinationals such as India or China. Thus, the findings of these studies could be replicated and generalized widely. Third, the Korean expatriates selected responses by themselves to measure task performance. However, this kind of self-report study might have inflated the common source error. Future research should contrast the findings with data from their leaders or relevant others. However, a great number of respondents stated that they did not have supervisors since they occupied the highest position in their international assignments.

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned limitations, our study offers significant theoretical and practical implications regarding advances in our knowledge about the task performance of expatriates from recently industrialized countries. Future studies should examine the predictors of contextual performance as well.

Footnotes

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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