Recruiting business expatriates in Portugal: a surefooted endeavor?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2020-0233 |
| Published date | 09 August 2022 |
| Date | 09 August 2022 |
| Pages | 1-26 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | João Vasco Coelho |
Recruiting business expatriates in
Portugal: a surefooted endeavor?
Jo~
ao Vasco Coelho
ISCTE-Instituto Universit
ario de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract
Purpose –Managerial discourses tend to portray work-related mobility practices in a positive light,
presenting mobility assignments as a place of stimulus and differentiation. A conception of mobility as an
opportunity, may contrast, in specific economies and business settings, with lived personal experiences. This
article reports the results of a three-year study, aimed to question how multinational companies (MNCs)located
in a small and developing European economy (Portugal) are building talent pools for expatriate assignments.
Interaction effects, as proposed by the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, are considered as lens to
understand the interplay of company expatriate policies, willingness profiles and psychological contracts of
expatriates. By using a Portuguese sample, the study examines whether prior findings in mature economies
and consolidated MNCs can be generalized to less developed international business settings.
Design/methodology/approach –A three-year study, encompassing 24 expatriate cases observed in five
multinational firms born or located in Portugal. Two techniques of empirical data collection were used:
statistical sources and documental analysis and in-depth interviews. A total of 37 interviews were conducted,
both in-person and remotely, of which 13 were with company managers and representatives, and 24 with
expatriates (as defined and referred like this by the companies under study).
Findings –Heterogeneous company policies, ranging from juvenile, functionalist to more dynamic and flow-
based approaches, are presented as qualifying resources of willingness levels and psychological contracts of
expatriates. Observed interaction effects between policies, willingness and psychological contracts, empirically
mirrored in three profiles (conformist, protean and disrupted expatriates) suggest that incentive effects
(emanating from company policies) and job demand-resource balance, factored as terms of social and economic
trade, are non-linear and asymmetric, influencing firm propensity to succeed while using international work to
support company expansion goals. As job resources, expatriate policies are presented as operating as pull or
push factors: functionalistHR approaches seem to act as push factors generating more conformist or compelled
willingness profiles.
Research limitations/implications –Generalization of study’s outcomes has limitations. Future studies
are encouraged to use comparative and longitudinal research designs. Furthermore, future research should
include business expatriates with entry-level positions, and increase the number of interviewees, as results can
also be considered as limited by sample size.
Practical implications –It is suggested that further strategic work is needed to present expatriation
development value, formally screen and consider willingness level as selection criteria, and enlarge the pool
(from internal to external) of candidates, in peripheral economic settings such as Portugal. A shift to more
dynamic and job resource-dense policies are suggested as beneficial, as pathway to optimize social and
economic value from expatriation assignments and work experiences.
Originality/value –By putting the interplay between macro and micro-level processes into perspective, the
study provides empirical evidence on how company expatriate policies have come to promote unforeseen
differentiation of employee willingness and psychological contracts at the heart of MNCs. This is particularly
relevant in developing economies such as Portugal, challenging the need to build talent poolsfor international
work assignments. Empirical data illustrating company policies interactive effects with different willingness
profiles and psychological contracts of expatriates is provided.
Keywords Global work, Global mobility, Expatriation, Expatriate recruitment, Expatriate willingness,
Employment relations, Psychological contracts, Job demands-resources (JD-R) theory
Paper type Research paper
Recruiting
business
expatriates
1
©Jo
~
ao Vasco Coelho. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and
create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 24 May 2020
Revised 14 October 2021
23 January 2022
4 June 2022
15 July 2022
Accepted 20 July 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 7, 2023
pp. 1-26
Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-05-2020-0233
Introduction
This article examines expatriate willingness to accept international assignments and how
individualwillingness dependenciesrelate with companyexpatriate policies and psychological
contracts,in multinational companies(MNCs) of a less frequently citedand developed country
(Portugal).
Statistics are meager in describing the Portuguese forms of company-assigned worker
international mobility, but recent studies (Pinto et al., 2012;Farcas and Gonçalves, 2017)
indicate a possible raising trend in the last decade, coupled with self-initiated migration
movements (Pires et al., 2020). Empirical evidence exists supporting that recent work-related
mobility is being driven by poor labor market situation in Portugal, with pull factors (e.g.
work-related international experience) also being identified as willingness drivers, both for
company-led and self-initiated mobility (Farcas and Gonçalves, 2017;Pires et al., 2020).
Recent studies suggest that Portugal’s image as poster child for post-crisis emigration
may be misplaced (Justino, 2016;Pires et al., 2020), given the fact that, despite recent
emigration flows of highly skilled young people, promoted in particular by MNCs policies,
this didn’t change the traditional profile of low-skilled Portuguese emigration and the weight
social representations of mobility and positive expectations of accessing opportunities
abroad have, in leveraging unemployment and wage differentials as mobility intent drivers.
In Portugal, mobility-related representations and attitudes have a significant impact, varying
by social group, with youth and the more educated more likely to say that the chance of
working abroad is better, while older and less-educated people tend to be less optimistic about
mobility as an opportunity (Justino, 2016;Pires et al., 2020).
As employer organizations aim to expand and strengthen their presence overseas, their need
for international work and assignees typically grows(Brookfield, 2016). Recent studies show that
more than 90% of MNCs are currently using long-term assigned business expatriates (Finaccord,
2019;KPMG, 2020). In an increasingly diverse global mobility and international work scenario
(McNulty and Brewster, 2019;Jooss et al.,2020;Bonache et al., 2021), scarce empirical evidence
exists concerning the way and extent international work assignments are being deploye d by
Portuguese companies (C^
amara, 2011;Pinto et al., 2012;Martins and Diaconescu, 2014;Pinheiro
et al., 2015;Farcas and Gonçalves, 2017;Marques et al.,2021) and frame d by MNCs policies,
namely through the use of business assigned expatriates, that can be definedas “legally working
individuals who reside temporarily in a country of which they are not a citizen in order to
accomplish a career-related goal, being relocated abroad either by an organization or by self-
initiation, or directly employed within the host country”(McNulty and Selmer, 2017,p.30).
Within an international work context, additional pressure can arise from factors such as
geographic dispersion, exposure to different social references and frequent mobility, which
may create different types of job characteristics and interactions with contextual resources
(Rattrie and Kittler, 2014). For expatriate individuals, the role of company policies as
qualifying resources is increasingly empirically acknowledged as means to reduce strain and
prevent willingness and psychological contracts impairment (Kawai and Mohr, 2015;Biswas
et al., 2021). However, heterogenous MNCs practices tend to be observed, with an overall
degradation of expatriate working conditions, reduced organizational initiatives that support
employees, and an employer expectation of individuals taking more responsibility for their
own well-being (Biswas et al., 2021). As noted by Pinto et al. (2012, p. 2295), focusing research
efforts on the individuals’viewpoint about company policies, the dialectics established
between these policies and concrete expatriation experiences and perceptions of possible
impact of these experiences in their existing psychological contract (Rousseau, 1990;Guzzo
et al., 1994;Yan et al., 2002;Pate and Scullion, 2009;Perera et al., 2017;O’Donohue et al., 2018;
Sherman and Morley, 2018) is critical, as “most of the literature seems to be based on the
assumption that organizational interests to use international assignments are consistent with
individuals’motives, but that unitarist assumption has been under increasing scrutiny”.
ER
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