Tiered expatriation: A social relations approach to staffing multinationals

• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Author: Chris Smith,Yu Zheng
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21937

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Tiered expatriation: A social relations approach to staffing

multinationals

Yu Zheng | Chris Smith

School of Management, Royal Holloway

University of London, Egham, UK

Correspondence

Yu Zheng, School of Management, Royal

Holloway University of London, Egham

TW200EX, UK.

Email: yu.zheng@rhul.ac.uk

This article applies a social relations discourse to examine the use of expatriates in Chinese mul-

tinational companies (MNCs). Expatriates are analyzed based on two sets of social relations: the

social functions of expatriates (which include the global function of capital and the collective

function of labor) and the pathways of expatriation (which include intra- and interfirm transfers).

In particular, the framework incorporates the collective function of labor into the analysis of

expatriation, which has received limited attention in the existing international HRM literature.

Conceptually, the social relations discourse allowed us to frame staffing in an open system in

which HR practices involving expatriation are shaped by the intersections between the choices

of MNCs, the actions of workers, and the mediation of institutional players. Empirically, this arti-

cle presents three case studies of Chinese MNCs in Europe to illustrate the tiered expatriation

of managerial staff, technicians, and operational workers from interchangeable sources of labor.

The HR policy implications suggest greater diversity in the formation of international staffing

for MNCs.

KEYWORDS

Chinese multinational companies (MNCs), collective function of labor, embodied social

function, global function of capital, global workforce, pathways of expatriation, social relations

in expatriation, tiered expatriation

1|INTRODUCTION

Comparative studies of expatriation have challenged the conventional

definition of expatriates as a group of “expensive people in crucial

positions”(Brewster, Bonache, Cerdin, & Suutari, 2014, p. 1921).

Research based on Chinese multinational companies (MNCs), for

example, shows workers are expatriated to technical and operational

positions in developing countries, and expatriate workers outnumber

local recruits in some cases (Chen & Orr, 2009; Cooke, 2014; Lee,

2009, 2014; Mohan, 2013; Rui, Zhang, & Shipman, 2017). Examining

the sociocultural and institutional context of Chinese MNCs, “coun-

try-of-origin effects”and the host country environment are often

cited by researchers to explain the tendency to employ expatriate

workers. In particular, scholars suggest the choice to source a propor-

tion of the workforce from the home country is underpinned by the

relatively low costs of labor in China, the attributes of Chinese

workers, skill shortages in the host countries, and the fact that Chi-

nese MNCs are in the early stages of internationalization (Rui et al.,

2017; Wood, Mazouz, Yiin, & Cheah, 2014; Zhang & Fan, 2014).

While comparative analyses have enriched our understanding of the

context and contingencies that give rise to firms dispatching expatri-

ates to fill a wide range of positions, one may question whether the

phenomenon is only temporary for Chinese MNCs in a number of sec-

tors and locations or whether the emerging patterns of expatriation

observed in some Chinese MNCs raise the prospect of revisiting the

theoretical underpinning of expatriates as a concept. In this article, we

address this question by examining the theoretical constructs used to

distinguish expatriates. We argue a key element missing from analyses

of segmentation among expatriates, namely, the labor function

embodied by expatriates, needs to be incorporated to explain their

employment.

The increasing scale of expatriates has led to great diversity in

both the jobs performed by expatriates and in the ways they land their

jobs. As a result, the term “expatriate”is now much broader than

when it was first introduced to the HRM literature decades ago. In a

recent attempt to summarize the defining features of expatriates

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21937

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:489–502. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 489