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The challenge of dual career expatriate management in a specific host national environment: An exploratory study of expatriate and spouse adjustment in Switzerland based MNCs

BP2-STS

    04.12.2013

36

expatriation
cross-cultural adjustment
dual-career couples
female expatriates
Switzerland
English The number of expatriates from global firms has been continuously increasing over the past decades as multinational companies still view expatriation as an important tool for sharing and transferring knowledge, controlling subsidiaries and developing workforce competencies. Expatriate management is still a costly and complex task for multinational companies. Adjustment, which has been defined as an individual's degree of comfort, familiarity and ease with several aspects of a new cultural environment, is considered to play a central role in expatriation success. In a context characterized by the rise of dual career couples, the increasing number of female expatriates and the growing awareness concerning work life balance, private life issues are increasingly important for multinational companies. On the basis of 126 expatriate couples' questionnaires, this paper compares adjustment of male and female expatriates working in multinational companies in a specific host country environment: the Geneva Lake region in Switzerland where many MNCs have settled their European headquarters. Furthermore, our paper investigates the impact of two variables - gender and employment status - on adjustment of expatriate spouses.
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Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Series statement
  • Working Papers SES ; 447
License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 208749
  • RERO R007606492
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/303445
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