Study On Perception Of Host Country Nationals On The Quality And Managerial Skills Of Third Country Expatriates

The traditional mobility of staff within multinational corporations (MNC) is the typewhere executives from the MNC’s home-country move to a host-country where the MNChas, or is intending to have a foreign subsidiary; however, staff mobility nowadays alsoincludes executives from a third-country that are sent to a host-country to take over somemanagerial responsibilities in such country. The difference in the perception of quality andmanagerial skills between home-country and third-country executives is something thatmight be in the mind of host country nationals. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is toresearch the impact of country of origin (COO) on the perception of host countryexecutives about the quality and managerial skills of Expatriates.First, this thesis describes the phenomenon, which is executives from the third countryapart from MNC’s home-country moving to a host-country where the MNC hasa foreignsubsidiary. Then, in the literature review part, studies on process of perception and itsinfluencing factors are reviewed. In accordance with country of origin theory, threeresearch dimensions, namely country, company and individual are classified, and studies oninternational coordination mechanism, subsidiaries development process, internationaltalent hunt, and etc. are reviewed to build the research framework of this thesis. Next, in theempirical study section, six hypotheses are put forward basing on the framework, and aquestionnaire consisted of18major questions is designed, issued and collected. After that,with the help of SPSS19.0data analysis software, data is analyzed by means of reliabilityanalysis, validity analysis and descriptive analysis. In the end, the thesis is concluded bydiscussions from the three dimensions.This thesis finds that country of origin theory can be interpreted into the study of theperception of host country nationals on the third country expatriates. MNCs could improvethe perception by means of enhancing the training of expatriates, conveying companystrategies and missions among subsidiaries, boosting managerial and technologicalcommunication, upgrading internal learning and knowledge sharing mechanism and etc.