country to a place of work in another country, usually on a weekly or bi-weekly
basis, while the family remains at home. Frequent-flyer assignments were
defined as those when the employee undertakes frequent international busi-
ness trips but does not relocate (Fenwick, forthcoming, 2003).
It is possible that shorter assignments are used as a way of overcoming
costs and risks associated with longer expatriate assignments. Further, alter-
native forms of multinational enterprise such as collaborative, intra- and inter-
organizational networks or informal yet intensive collaborations, and ‘born
globals’, firms that are international from their inception, have proliferated
(Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1992; Oviatt and McDougall, 1995). These forms signi-
ficantly challenge prevailing views of multinational enterprise and, therefore,
of international HRM. They are implemented only through high levels of inter-
dependence between their constituents, and may require different approaches
to international staffing. Therefore, the likelihood of alternatives to traditional
international compensation and performance management being adopted in
such organizations will increase.
Increasingly, all who work in MNCs, not just those on international assign-
ment, are involved in international work. The ‘virtual assignment’ is defined as
an assignment where ‘an employee does not relocate to a host location, but has
international responsibilities for a part of the organization in another country
which they manage from the home country’ (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2000: 31).
It is a replacement for a traditional international assignment, and not one where
business travel is a normal part of a person’s role. However, it does involve
frequent business trips to the host country and relies on the use of telecommuni-
cation and information technology such as telephone, e-mail and video con-
ferencing as a substitute for actual physical presence in the foreign location.
A marketing manager for Hewlett-Packard Australia, for example, in addition
to several international business trips per year, is involved in teleconferencing
with other locations in the Hewlett-Packard international network. Often he
will wake at 3 a.m. to participate in a two- to three-hour international tele-
conference, after which he will prepare for a normal business day in his
Australian office. It is not unusual for this executive to spend 16-hour days ‘at
work’, balancing the demands of his home-based international responsibilities.The appeal of the virtual assignment is that it either removes or lessens
some of the barriers to the traditional assignment: staff immobility and cost
containment (Welch and Fenwick, 2002). However, in relation to international
compensation and performance management, the virtual assignment presents
its own challenges. These will now be briefly considered.
As mentioned earlier, equity is a central concern in compensation strategy.
Informal and formal interactions between virtual assignees necessary for effective
326 International Human Resource Management