CCT – and ultimately go on a global assignment – will play a key role in the
outcome of the effectiveness of a well-designed CCT program.
Designing effective training programs for host country
nationals and for third country nationalsAs organizations globalize their operations (e.g. establish international joint
ventures and foreign subsidiaries), they continue to recruit and select a mix of
different types of employees including host country national (employee with
citizenship of a country where he/she works), third country national
(employee with citizenship of a country different from the country where the
organization has its headquarters and different from the country where
he/she works), and parent country national (employee with citizenship of the
country where the organization has its headquarters). International joint ven-
tures (IJVs), for example, can include as many as nine different types of
employees each with their own distinct characteristics: foreign parent expa-
triate, host parent appointee, foreign parent transferee, host country national,
third country expatriate of foreign parents, third country expatriate of host
country parents, third country expatriate of the IJV, foreign headquarter exec-
utive, and host headquarter executive (see Zeira and Shenkar, 1990). The var-
ious employee groups, each with its own cultural background and unique
performance goals, highlight the complexity of issues associated with design-
ing CCT programs in organizations with multiple employee groups. For exam-
ple, should all employees receive general cultural awareness training and/or
cultural specific training? How will training for co-workers and subordinates
of a parent country national on a strategic/high potential assignment (e.g.,
general manager, vice-president) differ from training for co-workers and sub-
ordinates of a parent country national on a functional assignment (e.g., com-
pensation manager) or on a developmental assignment (e.g., international
marketing coordinator)?
The above issues, and other training design issues in general, can be
addressed through the systematic process for designing effective CCT pro-
grams explained in this chapter (see Figure 11.1, p. 286). Although we have
used the five phases of the CCT design process to provide an overview of
the major issues associated with designing CCT programs for expatriates
who can either be parent country nationals or third country nationals, the
five phases can also be used to design training programs for host country
nationals (Tarique et al., 2001). Phase 1 (identification of employee type),
however, will need to be modified to include different types of host coun-
try nationals. The remaining phases can be used to determine the specific
training needs, to establish learning goals and measures for determiningtrain-
ing effectiveness, and to evaluate learning outcomes of host country
trainees.
300 International Human Resource Management