The effects of HR policies and repatriate self-adjustment on global competency transfer

Abstract

A growing body of literature has emphasized the important role of international assignments in helping create a more globally competent management cadre. Indeed, the competencies acquired through international assignments can often be a significant source of competitive advantage for firms. However, for employers to derive benefits from a repatriate's newly acquired global competencies, they must work to ensure the successful transfer of those competencies to subsequent job assignments. This study specifically examined the degree to which a firm's HR policies and practices influence the transfer of global competencies acquired through an overseas assignment. In addition, we examined the impact on competency transfer of the repatriate's capacity and desire to adjust to the repatriation job assignment, which has been a largely neglected element in this stream of research. The relative predictive effects on competency transfer of both the firm's HR policies and the employee's self-adjustment were determined via hierarchical regression. Results showed a large incremental change in predicted variance when firm's HR policies were entered after employee self-adjustment. Conversely, employee self-adjustment showed only minimal incremental change in predicted variance when entered after HR policies. A deliberate and proactive consideration of a firm's HR policies and practices, therefore, seems of primary importance in deriving benefits from an employee's overseas assignment, while the employee's self-adjustment experiences are also important but relatively less so.