»expatriate staffing«

As mentioned before the official language at Volkswagen and Panopa is German. Nevertheless Panopa's website is in German, English and Polish which Dr. Hucht simply explains as a matter of good education. Panopa after all is a Polish company with Polish employees and Polish clients and communication foremost has to work for them.
At the same time, it was easy for Panopa to conduct their business in Poland since everything was communicated in German. Volkswagen simply enforces German in their factories on the managerial level. Evidently, this can be considered arrogant. And Dr. Hucht admits as well that it allowed the German staff in Poland to become quite lazy. Considering to send expatriates to Italy or Spain, for example, the need to learn the language is accepted without doubt. But calling employees to learn Polish would just be another counter-argument for a mission in Eastern Europe. To learn Polish does not attract a lot of Germans, different to learning Italian or Spanish for example. Polish has no use outside of Poland and Poland does not seem very exquisite to Germans. Italy on the contrary has a flair of culture and suits perfect for vacations.

[quotation follow-up]
("Die Mitarbeiter selber und die Kunden aus Polen, die sollen ja das verstehen, das da steht. Ich finde, das ist auch einfach eine Frage der guten Erziehung, wenn ich in einem Land tätig bin, dass ich mich zumindest bemühe, die Sprache dort zu beherrschen. Und auch als Unternehmen so auftrete, dass ich mich dann so präsentiere, dass ich diese Sprache beherrsche. Was es uns da sicherlich etwas leichter macht und auf der anderen Seite, wenn man es jetzt negativ sehen will, uns vielleicht auch faul werden lässt in der Beziehung, ist die Tatsache, dass die Projektkommunikation offiziell in Deutsch läuft. Zumindest auf der Managementebene, Geschäftsführung, Werksleitung, VW und die ein, zwei Ebenen darunter, da ist die Kommunikation auf Deutsch. Weil eben VW sagt: 'Da, wo wir ein Werk haben, wird Deutsch kommuniziert.' Das ist dann so, wenn man so will, die Arroganz, die sich jetzt das Unternehmen eben leistet. Uns kommt es entgegen, weil wenn wir dahin kommen und die Leute mit denen wir zu tun haben sprechen alle Deutsch. Und wenn es in die Werkerebene geht, dann ist zur Not ein Dolmetscher dabei. Das macht natürlich auch irgendwo faul." Dr. Hucht, 2nd 09.05 min.)

("Wenn ich normalerweise sag, ich geh irgendwohin, würde ich eigentlich damit verbinden: 'Du musst die Sprache lernen.'" Dr. Hucht, 2nd 11.29 min.)

("Wenn ich mir jetzt vorstelle, ich würde jetzt beruflich mich dazu entscheiden, in ein Land zu gehen dessen Sprache ich nicht beherrsche, würde ich mich normalerweise dran machen und die Sprache lernen. Und da kommt vielleicht auch so ein Punkt hinzu, wo Polen und auch Polnisch in den Augen von Deutschen einen anderen Stellenwert hat als z.B. Italien, Spanien, England mal sowieso - ich sag mal, Englisch sprechen die Meisten, wenn sie die Ausbildung hinter sich haben, zumindest ein bißchen. Aber wo ich auch schon Diskussion im Unternehmen mitgekriegt hab, 'also, wenn ich nach Polen muss, das ist ja wenig lukrativ' a) das Land und auch die Sprache, da kann ich international nichts mit anfangen. Das sieht bei Spanisch dann schon wieder anders aus. Wenn die Möglichkeit besteht, ich sag mal, einen Job in Italien oder Spanien anzunehmen, trifft man viel eher auf leuchtende Augen als wenn's darum geht, wer geht nach Polen." Dr. Hucht, 2nd 10.05 min.)

("'Kein Thema. Italienisch? Ja, klar, gerne.' Das ist dann auch irgendwie westlich. [...] Das hat dann irgendwie noch was von Kultur. Ich kann jetzt Italienisch - toll. Aber Polnisch hat da überhaupt keinen Stellenwert. [...] Und jemanden zu ködern - 'Da lernst du eine andere Kultur kennen und lernst ne andere Sprache.' - da muss das ja nicht Polnisch sein. Wenn schon, dann was, womit ich was anfangen kann: Urlaub mal - schick." Dr. Hucht, 2nd 12.07 min.)

("Zumal Polnisch sehr sehr schwer zu lernen ist. Ich hab's nicht geschafft." Vieth, 2nd 10.58 min.)

Even though it is widely acknowledged that a systematic assessment in recruiting employees does already half the job, there are hardly any systematic selection procedures for finding the right expatriate. Ones and Sinangil rely on numbers from the Human Resource Institute (1998) stating that 92% of companies select expatriates because of managerial recommondations. Over 50% would not use any structured procedures and around 10% would not apply any screening at all.
Ones and Sinangil imagine two reasons for this:

• expatriates are mostly recruited from within the organization. Thus being send on an expatriate mission is seen as a placement decision.
• research on which variables would lead a successful mission was very inconsistent in results. That made it difficult to put theory into practice.

[p.426]
Based on Adler (1991) the United States Peace Corps was actually the first institution who would select their candidates for overseas assignments by personality tests and panel interviews. Unfortunately they give this system up due to research revealing a "less than stellar record in predicting success". Nowadays the results of these studies are seen questionable which Ones and Sinangil will review when they talk about criterion related-validities.
In the 1970s the United States armed service used the Navy Overseas Adjustment Scale to evaluate service people (but not technical staff). The Canadian International Development Agency also developed standardized instrument to select employees. Nevertheless, relying on Tung (1981) "only 5% of companies surveyed formally assessed interpersonal competence and relational abilities". Mumford (1983) is quoted "'People are selected for overseas assignment based on technical skills, availability and other factors, but not on their ability to get along overseas. Even in the world of diplomacy, people are not sent overseas because they are adaptable, empathic, preserving, patient and courteous...' (p.95)."

As mentioned before research was not really helping to establish systematic assessment structures. Ones and Viswesvaran (1998) get back to an earlier overview of what scholars found as important personality trait for expatriates. Copeland & Griggs (1988), for example, suggested "breadth" as an important characteristic. This would include "hardness like water" or "positive regard for others". Brislin (1981), for example, speaks of strong personality, "including self-esteem, integrity, security, loyalty, courage and self-concept" while Hammer, Gudykunst, and Wiseman (1978) call for character traits such as "communication competence (which included respect, nonjudgementalness, empathy, self-orientedness)". Ones and Sinangil criticize these outcomes because they only consider aspects of personality but don't get "to the personality roots of these proposed predictors."
[p.427]
Instead they propose to sort the proposed predictors into the so-called Big Five dimensions of personality (on which I just took a quick glance in wikipedia while I prefered the German version, I really am not a psychologist...).
Ones and Sinangil suggest the following traits to potentially predict overseas behavior. They apperrantly result out of ratings done by expatriates themselves, host country nationals and out of traditional criterion-related validity studies [Peace Corps]).

• tolerance (Miller, 1972)
• interpersonal cultural sensivity (Byrnes, 1966)
• open-mindedness
• sensitivity to power (Ezekiel, 1968)
• authoritarianism/dogmatism (Smith, 1966)

The authors continue that checking for personality-based predictors does not tell much about which factors are regarded as important for an effective performance. This was studied by Arthur and Bennett (1995) who asked expatriates and organizations to rate 54 attributes. They came up with the following list of factors perceived to contribute to success:

• family situation
• flexibility/adaptability
• job knowledge and motivation
• relational skills
• extra-cultural openness

small comment: as you might notice: this part is where I got stuck... personality traits, dimensions, criteria, factors, effectiveness, aaaaaaaah! What you wanna tell me?

Ones and Sinangil then go over to analyze criterion-related validities. As far as I understand it the purpose of these validity-studies is to check if the assumptions where right.
As mentioned before the validity-studies in the 1960s had shown the selection system of the Peace Corp to be superfluous. There seem to be no success-predicting character traits (the authors rely on Harris, 1973, 1975). Analyzing these earlier studies, predictor-related, methodological, and criterion problems come up. No standards had been established to define different personality variables. Then not enough samples had been taken to meet statistical standards. The results were conducted with measurement and analysis problems. On top of that the studies were carried through with the Peace Corps for which volunteers were sent abroad, which is quite a different group of people with other purposes than businesses and their staff on an expatriate assignment.
Recent criterion-related validity studies draw quite a different picture of personality traits predicting expatriate's possible success or failure. The purpose of these studies is to determine which character traits effect which aspects of the expatriate's life abroad.
Sinangil and Ones (1998), for example, measured the dependability facet of consciousness according to the Prudence Scale of Hogan Personality Inventory. The results showed it to be a poor predictor for expatriate job performance but a valid predictor of overseas counterproductive behaviors.
Reviewing several results of these researches, Ones and Sinangil call on decision makers to not base their expatriate selection merely on technical skills: "There is ampel evidence that ability, knowledge and skills are valid predictors of performance in any performance domain (e.g., Kuncel, Hezlett & Ones, 2001; Schmidt & Hunter, 1992; Viswesvaran & Ones, in press) and for the complex environment that expatriates operate in, we see cognitive ability and technical skills as crucial determinants of overseas job performance."
[p.428/429]

I started reading a thesis on predictors concerning German expatriate, so I will get into this in a little more detail later. And while I trust in these personality-based predictors, I still wonder about the Wechselwirkungen with training..... thus: which influence does training have on personality and hence behavior in the foreign culture?

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