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We all want expatriate success; but what does “success” really mean? 5th Septemberl 2017Sending an employee for a posting abroad represents a large investment; both in terms of relocation costs and in terms of anticipated business outcomes. Consequently, expatriate success is often discussed and studied. However, what constitutes success depends both on whose perspectives is taken, and on what interests that stakeholder has.

First, there are many stakeholders involved in a relocation, including the unit sending the employee, the receiving host country unit, the expatriate and the accompanying spouse and children. Second are the underlying motivations of each stakeholder. For organizations, there can be several reasons to send an employee abroad, such as to solve a need for technical or managerial competence, to develop new business opportunities, to enable knowledge transfer, to disseminate company culture, to forge closer bonds between the units, develop future global leadership skills, to name some of the most common ones. Naturally, what constitutes success will depend on which of these motivations is the driver behind the expatriation. The issues are similar for the receiving unit, though not always the same goals for a given expatriate as the sending unity; further, for this unit, there is also a question of what influence, positive or negative, the expatriate has on the local employees.  

Expatriates themselves also relocate with different motivations and priorities; ranging from a sense of adventure, to financial incentives, a desire to give their children an international experience, to improve their future career prospects and to develop own skills and professional network. For accompanying spouses, the motivations are often similar, though frequently more focused on the family based motivations.

With these differing perspectives and motivations, what measure of success should be used? Due to the range of stakeholders and possible motivations, success should be evaluated for each individual case and on pre-defined measures. However, there is one common factor that will contribute significantly to most, if not all, of the above mentioned motivations and stakeholders. For expatriates to succeed, they need to have a secure and strong basis to work from locally, so as to adjust to the local environment and perform.