temporary, a one-year position to train a Chinese man to replace
me. I succeeded and became permanent.’Lack of confidence on the part of organisations can communicate itself to
foreign colleagues and clients, thus making it even harder for women to be taken
seriously (Adler, 1987). It may well be, therefore, that worries about women being
accepted as expatriate managers stem more from male managers in the home
country organisation blaming other cultures for their own prejudices, as postu-
lated by Moran (1986), than from a correct interpretation of reality.
Organisational processesDespite the problems facing women on international assignments outlined in
the section above, there is no evidence to show that women fail in significantly
larger numbers than men. In fact the evidence is the other way, with signifi-
cant failure rates (in terms of premature return home) for men. If women are
not failing once they are appointed, the low number of women in these posi-
tions might well be more a result of processes happening within the organisa-
tion. Research shows three potential influencing factors: approaches to
increasing diversity; supervisor–subordinate relationship and organisational
selection processes for international assignments.
Approaches to increasing diversity
Adler (2002) argues that participation rates of women in international manage-
ment will depend on companies’ assumptions about the value to the company
of diversity, the value to the company of men’s and women’s unique contribu-
tions and to the belief, or lack thereof, of the possibility of positive synergies.
She identifies four different approaches as follows:
- Identifying with men’s approaches to managing internationally;
- Denying differences;
- Identifying with women’s approaches to managing internationally;
- Creating synergy – leveraging women’s and men’s approaches to managing
internationally.
The first and third approach acknowledge difference but in a negative way, in
that one approach is seen to be better than the other (as we have seen earlier in
this chapter). The second approach, in contrast, denies the possibility of differ-
ences: it sees women’s and men’s styles of managing internationally as identical
and that they will be perceived as identical by foreign colleagues and clients.
The fourth approach, most commonly associated with the transnational type
organisation, is premised on a company’s ability to create synergy by integrating
372 International Human Resource Management