Leadership and Management Development: Recommendation of Solutions for Expatriation Problems

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.7 (73), University of Hertfordshire, course: Leadership and Management Development, language: English, abstract: Anglo-French Wines Direct (AFW), a multinational company based in the UK, established a 'High Flyers Programme' four years ago to develop future leaders to enable to achieve its global growth objectives. The aim was to send them to one of the international subsidiaries for two years and bring them back for a more senior position. However, the new HR Director of AFW has discovered the following problems within this programme: 1. 25 percent of the expatriates returned home early due to dissatisfaction. 2. Over 35 percent of the expatriates were considered to be underperforming on the assignment. 3. Around 30 percent expatriates left within a year of their return to England. In order to achieve its business objectives, it is essential that AFW turns round this failing programme into a leading-edge leadership programme. Particularly since AFW is a large company and plans to expand its business further, it is according to Burgoyne (1988, cited in Gold et al., 2010) vital that the programme has a high level of maturity, i.e. complexity and structure, enabling to meet the organisational needs and objectives. Thus, AFW needs to take a strategic and integrative approach and manage each stage of the 'International Assignment Cycle' (See Appendix 1), i.e. recruitment and selection, hiring, preparation, expatriation and repatriation, effectively. Accordingly, this report aims to present a mix of solutions regarding each stage and provide recommendations for evaluating the new programme to ensure its effectiveness.