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RATIONALE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
The world’s leading multinational organisations have learned from bitter experience that procuring staff for foreign operations is a complex business. The cost of sending expatriates abroad is exorbitant, but worse still, the high percentage of expatriates who default on their contracts because of premature return to the home country or resignation during or shortly after the foreign contract, results in enormous cost to the organisation (Vermeulen, 2002:1). The statistics are so high that companies considering foreign expansion are very cautious. It is estimated that the total cost per failure to the parent company can be as high as three times the expatriate’s annual domestic salary, plus the cost of relocation, which in turn is affected by currency exchange rates and the location of the foreign assignment (Hill, 2003:612). Although different figures are put forward for different scenarios, Griffin and Pustay (2002:583) claim that the cost of expatriate failure to a multinational can vary from 40 000 US dollars to 250 000 US dollars, including original training costs, moving expenses and lost managerial productivity, but excluding the decreased performance of the foreign
subsidiary itself. This means that if the process of expatriating an employee and his or her family goes wrong, it can be a woefully expensive mistake for the multinational corporation. Expatriate labour turnover, often falling in the range of 20 to 50 percent, is far higher than equivalent domestic labour turnover (Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985:39). Labour turnover of expatriate employees worldwide costs American companies in excess of 2 billion US dollars a year. Furthermore, this figure does not include indirect losses in labour turnover such as lost sales, soured relationships,
and loss of goodwill (Naumann et al., 2000:228).
In the light of the investment an organisation makes in an expatriate, and the high cost of premature return and labour turnover of expatriates, it is desirable that researchers identify the reasons for these failures. According to Black (1999), Hill (2003) and Tung (1987), the reasons for expatriate failure are:
Inability of the spouse to adjust.
Inability of the expatriate to adjust.
Family-related problems.
Expatriate’s personality and lack of emotional maturity.
Inability to cope with the international job and heavier responsibilities in a foreign country.
Difficulties with the new environment.
Lack of motivation to work in a foreign country.
Lack of technical expertise.
Research, to find the causes of poor adjustment, has focused mainly on three general issues:
Selection of the « ideal » expatriate.
Development of cross-cultural training programmes.
Spouse or family issues.
(Naumann, 1993a:62)
Black et al. (1991:291) argue that the above is true, but does not present a holistic picture. According to Black (1988:277), expatriate adjustment refers to the level of comfort a professional sojourner experiences during the stay abroad. Even though the adjustment of assignees has long been regarded as an all-encompassing concept, empirical support has been obtained to distinguish between three particular facets of adjustment: general adjustment, work adjustment and interaction
adjustment (Black, 1988:277; Breiden, 2003:2). Black et al. (1991:291) argue that integrating job and organisational variables with individual and non-work variables as predictors of international adjustment should provide a comprehensive framework for international adjustment. The findings made in a number of subsequent studies have confirmed the multifaceted conceptualisation of expatriate adjustment and has suggested that some degree of interaction exists between work-related and non work-related facets of adjustment (Shaffer, Harrison & Gilley, 1999:557).
Job attitudes are thought to play a key role in the labour turnover process. Domestic studies have generally found that job attitudes are negatively related to turnover, although this relationship is mitigated by intermediate links. Surprisingly, job attitudes which are important antecedents of turnover domestically, have received little attention in international research (Naumann, 1993a:62). Naumann (1993a:62) notes that given the large body of literature that has linked job attitudes to turnover domestically, it is unfortunate that the research examining expatriate job attitudes is almost non-existent, since there appears to be no obvious reason that the relationship between job attitudes and turnover should be weaker in an international context. Research has consistently indicated that a variety of job/task characteristics and organisational characteristics are directly related to employee attitudes and labour turnover (Bluedorn, 1982:135; Cotton & Tuttle, 1986:55). Therefore, according to Naumann (1993a:62), characteristics of expatriates’ jobs and organisations are likely to shape their work attitudes. Although a variety of unique international factors may incrementally influence job attitudes during a foreign assignment, many of the variables shaping job attitudes may be relevant for both a domestic as well as an international assignment. Studies by Lee (2005), Lee and Liu (2006; 2007) and Naumann et al. (2000) have identified a positive relationship between favourable job attitudes and the tendency to complete a foreign assignment and remain with the multinational corporation.
Research efforts to identify predictors of expatriate adjustment focus on individual and non-work variables. A more comprehensive view of international adjustment can be gained by integrating job and organisational variables with individual and nonwork variables as predictors of international adjustment.
CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH STUDY
1.3 RATIONALE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
1.4 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND HYPOTHESIS
1.5 DEMARCATION OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
1.6 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
1.7 THEORETICAL MILIEU OF THE RESEARCH STUDY
1.7.1 Globalization and internationalization
1.7.2 International human resource management (IHRM)
1.7.3 Staffing policies in international human resource management
1.7.4 Expatriation
1.7.5 U-curve theory of adjustment
1.7.6 Factors influencing expatriate adjustment
1.7.7 Job attitudes
1.7.8 Work-related attitudes as predictors of expatriate adjustment
1.8 CHAPTER LAYOUT
1.9 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 ATTITUDES
2.3 JOB ATTITUDES
2.3.1 Job satisfaction
2.3.2 Organisational commitment
2.3.3 Job involvement
2.3.4 Perceived organisational support (POS)
2.4 BEHAVIOURAL MANIFESTATIONS OF JOB ATTITUDES
2.4.1 Labour turnover
2.4.2 Absenteeism and tardiness
2.4.3 Performance
2.4.4 Organisational citizenship behaviour (OBC)
2.4.5 Motivation
2.4.6 Perceived stress
2.4.7 Violence and thef
2.5 MEASURING ATTITUDES
2.6 RESEARCHED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB ATTITUDES AND LABOUR TURNOVER IN AN INTERNATIONAL STTING
2.7 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 3: RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 RESEARCH APPROACH
3.3 TYPE OF RESEARCH DESIGN
3.4 MEASURING INSTRUMENT
3.5 SAMPLE DESIGN AND SAMPLING METHOD
3.6 DATA MANAGEMENT
3.7 DATA ANALYSIS
3.7.1 Numerical data analysis
3.7.2 Textual data analysis
3.8 VALIDITY OF THE RESEARCH DESIGN
3.8.1 Internal validity
3.8.2 External validity
3.9 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 PROCEDURE FOR SAMPLING
4.3 PARTICIPANTS IN THE STUDY
4.3.1 The sample size of the study
4.3.2 The demographic profile of the participants
4.4 PROCEDURE FOR DATA MANAGEMENT
4.4.1 Administration of the data collection
4.4.2 Administration of the returned questionnaires
4.5 RELIABILITY OF THE MEASURMENT INSTRUMENT
4.6 PROCEDURE FOR QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS (NUMERICAL DATA)
4.6.1 Means and standard deviations
4.6.2 T-test
4.6.3 ANOVA (Analysis of variance)
4.6.4 Spearman’s rank-order correlations coefficient
4.6.5 Logistic regression
4.6.6 Chi-square (X²) goodness-of-fit test as part of Logistic regression
4.7 PROCEDURE FOR QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS (TEXTUAL DATA)
4.8 PROCEDURE FOR DATA INTERPRETATION
4.9 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS AND FINDINGS
CHAPTER 6: INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION OF THE RESEARCH FINDINGS
CHAPTER 7: FINAL SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
