13 Repatriation and Knowledge Management
Mila Lazarova and Paula Caligiuri1 Introduction 333
2 Benefits from expatriate assignments 335
3 Challenges of repatriation 336
4 ‘Best practice’ recommendations for successful repatriation 339
5 The role of organizational support for successful repatriation 343
6 Beyond providing support: new concerns (and solutions) for strategic
repatriation and knowledge management 344
7 Conclusions 351
8 Discussion questions 351
9 Further reading 352
References 353
1 INTRODUCTION
The diversity of national contexts and the necessity to effectively manage
workers of different cultural backgrounds introduces complexity to the opera-
tions of multinational corporations (MNCs). Many MNCs recognize that they
lack not only global executives capable of managing and leading on a global
scale, but they also lack the comprehensive systems for developing these
necessary human resource capabilities (Gregersen et al., 1998; Caligiuri and