Sowing is not as difficult as reaping : A study of expatriate evaluation in Swedish-based MNCs

Sammanfattning: Several recent articles stress that enough research has not been devoted to the performance management of expatriates. The cost of an expatriate is two to three times higher than the cost of a local employee. Therefore it is important to ensure that the investment made is returned to the company. Hence, this study aims to investigate how MNC’s evaluate their expatriates. By interviewing expatriate managers in four Swedish MNC’s we came to the conclusion that companies tend to rely much on informal measurements to evaluate expatriates whereas using formal measurements of hard criteria was done in the same way as for all employees. Our findings suggest that companies, in order to get the most out of their expatriates, ought to put more emphasis on the selection process and the repatriation process.