Brewster, 2001). Third, and most important, is the need to utilize much further
the practice of impatriation – which has been defined as the selective process
of transferring HCNs and/or TCNs into the domestic organization of the MNC
on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Harvey et al. (1999b) argue that this
type of international transfer exposes host country nationals to the headquar-
ters’ corporate culture and facilitates both the development of a corporate per-
spective and global teams.
As global competition intensifies, competition for global leaders to man-
age overseas operations will steadily intensify and MNCs must develop new
ways to identify, attract and retain international executive talent (Gregerson
et al., 1998). The creativity and resourcefulness of finding an ample number of
qualified managers who can manage across cultures effectively becomes a key
strategic international HRM challenge. Yet the evidence suggests that the number
of female global assignees is disproportionately low in relation to the overall
size of the qualified labour pool (Linehan and Scullion, 2001a; see also Chapter 14).
Recent research has confirmed that while organizations may be prepared to
promote women through their domestic management hierarchy, few women
are given opportunities to expand their career horizons through access to
international careers (Caligiuri and Tung, 1999; Linehan, 1999). The lack of
willingness to recruit and develop women as international managers is worry-
ing as recent research conducted on the outcome of women’s global assign-
ments has indicated that female expatriates are generally successful in their
global assignments (Caliguiri et al., 1999; Linehan and Scullion, 2001b) and
that important formal and informal barriers remain to increasing women’s
participation in international management (Mayrhofer and Scullion, 2002).
The third area, which impacts on the supply of international managers, is
the failure by many companies to adequately address repatriation problems. The
repatriation of managers has been identified as a major IHRM problem for multi-
national companies in Europe and North America (Black and Gregerson, 1999;
Harvey, 1989; Linehan and Scullion, 2002a; see also Chapter 13). For many
European MNCs this problem was becoming more acute in recent years because
expansion of foreign operations had often taken place at the same time as the
rationalization of domestic operations, thereby reducing the opportunities for
repatriates (Scullion, 1992; Forster, 1999). There is growing recognition that
where companies are seen to deal unsympathetically with the problems faced by
expatriates on re-entry, especially concerns about losing out on opportunities at
home, managers will be more reluctant to accept the offer of international
assignments (Scullion, 1994). Research in North America indicates that retention
of expatriate managers is a growing problem for many MNCs (Black et al., 1999),
yet few firms have developed formal repatriation policies and programmes (Stroh
et al., 1998). Recent research suggests the need for MNCs to develop a more
strategic approach to repatriation and expatriate career planning; however in
practice many firms continue to adopt an ad hoc ‘sink or swim’ attitude towards
both employees and their families and many expatriate managers continue to
78 International Human Resource Management