10 Composing an International Staff
Anne-Wil Harzing1 Introduction 251
2 Staffing policies 252
3 Motives for international transfers 259
4 Recruitment and selection of expatriates 268
5 Expatriate adjustment and failure 271
6 Transfer archetypes 275
7 Summary and conclusions 277
8 Discussion questions 277
9 Further reading 277
References 278
1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter is the first of five that will look at different aspects of managing
international staff. In this chapter we will discuss the challenges associated
with composing an international staff. First, Section 2 reviews different staffing
policies and looks in some detail at the factors influencing the choice between
host country and parent country nationals. Subsequently, Section 3 takes a
strategic perspective on international transfers and looks at the underlying
motives that MNCs have to send out expatriates to their international sub-
sidiaries. We will investigate whether these different motives for international
transfers are more important in some circumstances than in others and