Cross Cultural Management: Expatriate Motivation & Employee Attitudes

This essay delves into the complexities of cross cultural management, particularly focusing on the influence of expatriate managers' cross cultural motivation on the attitudes and organizational identification of host country national (HCN) employees. It analyzes a research article that posits a strong relationship between expatriate motivation, coordination efforts, and HCN employee commitment. The essay critiques the research, suggesting that while coordination is important, the role of expatriate managers extends to instilling company culture, knowledge transfer, and talent development. The practical implications highlight the need for organizations to invest in cross cultural training for expatriates, emphasizing understanding local cultures and adapting leadership styles. The essay concludes that expatriate managers significantly impact HCN employee behavior and that cross cultural motivation is a crucial factor in successful international management, promoting harmony and productivity within multinational organizations. Desklib offers a wealth of similar resources for students.

RUNNING HEAD: CROSS CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
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Cross Cultural Management

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Introduction
Cross cultural management is considered as the management of employees overseas from
a culture other than the domestic culture. Organizations have subsidiaries in different countries
which are managed by headquarters. Further, in the cross cultural management some employees
immigrated from one country to another for work. In order to manage and understand culture of
different countries and to adjust, employees need some time and face many challenges. Cross
culture management can be successful and effective when manager is able to identify the cultural
differences and acknowledge it (Lee, Bacharach, & Lewis, 2014). Managers need to change
some practices and policies and system in order to promote cultural diversity and manage
cultural differences, tis leads to improvement in employee performance and motivation of
expatriates. This assessment is based on the analysis of “expatriate managers cross cultural
motivation and host country national employees attitudes”. In below sections the journal is
analyzed in relation with the concept of cross cultural management and models of culture. At last
conclusion and implication of it in the organization and manager is given.
Literature Review and Hypothesis
Cross cultural management is a challenging task for multinational companies as
managing host country nationals of an overseas subsidiary leads to problematic situation. The
differences in cultural between host country and home country if not managed effectively may
resultant in low commitment by host country national employees and perception of injustice
amongst employees. Oh, Lee, & Oh (2018).said that HCN employees are not ready to accept
changes in the overseas subsidiaries because of low level of organization identification.

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Organization identification is considered as” the way organizational members perceive oneness
with the organization”. When host national employees have high organization identification, they
perform better in the subsidiary and stay for long time in the organization. Considering this
factor, Epitropaki, (2013) stated that organizational identification is important factor to change
employees attitude and to improve organizational performance. This research is based on the
hypotheses that HCN employees are connected and have high organization identification.
Second, the research focuses on whether coordination approach of expatriates is important for
HCN employees performance and organization identification or not. Oh, Lee, & Oh (2018) said
that coordination is important element for multinational companies as in order to run successful
subsidiaries in the other country expatriate managers need to coordinate. However, the research
focus on the coordination approach for cross cultural management in order to respect the host
country rules and regulation and the role of expatriate managers in building trust between host
country and headquarters. All this would be an important antecedent of HCN employees
organization identification (Barner-Rasmussen, Ehrnrooth, Koveshnikov, & Mäkelä, 2014).
Expatriates managers are considered as the most important way of sharing information
between headquarters and subsidiaries. When expatriates managers have high cross cultural
management this represent a positive sign to headquarters about how headquarters care about
host country national employees. The cross cultural management by expatriate managers
positively influence HCN organization identification and support positively affect headquarters
environment and subsidiaries from where they have been posted. Ahlowalia, Tiwary, & Jha,
(2014). Supported that the role of expatriate is to coordinate the activities between subsidiaries
and headquarters and their behavior positively influences the host country national employees
and productivity.

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In cross cultural management leadership plays an important role in understanding
different cultures and managing it. Leaders are the one who deals with cross cultural differences
as “the leader of tomorrow is someone who can jump across boundaries and disciplines and
analyze cultural differences in global platform”.
In support this in the research, Mäkelä, Andersson, & Seppälä (2012) described that cross
culturally motivated individuals actively understand the work regulations, practices and value of
foreign countries. It is essential for expatriate managers to adjust and mold in the foreign culture
and change its management style and work practices according to local culture of the country.
From the research concluded that expatriate managers cross cultural motivation influences the b
host country national employees organization identification, higher the organization
identification higher the productivity.
The results from research state that cross cultural motivation is a fundamental
competency for expatriate managers. The ability of expatriate managers to understand local
culture and to know HCN employees encourages cooperative behavior and increase host country
national employees’ organization identification level. Further, the research concluded that “an
expatriate manager’s attribution of HCN employees’ incompetence to their unwillingness to
accept headquarters’ culture and policy results in HCN employees distrusting and resisting both
the expatriate manager and headquarters” and also shows that coordination approach also
positively influences host country national employees’ attitudes (Oh, Lee,& Oh, 2018).
Analysis
It is analyzed from research paper and findings of research paper that expatriate managers
plays an important role in managing cross cultural differences but the focus of research is only

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on coordination activities that expatriate managers perform in order to unionized the subsidiary
and headquarters activities. , Quintane, & Carnabuci, (2016) contradict and said that role of
expatriate managers is not only limited to coordinating activities between headquarters and
subsidiaries rather than the role of expatriate manager is broad. That includes instilling the
company culture in foreign subsidiaries, understanding of local culture and factors that can affect
business activities, transferring of knowledge and skills to overseas employees and developing
management talent and encourage them to contribute more in the subsidiaries so that overall
organization objectives can be achieved.
Further, the research highlights that the cross culture motivated expatriate managers
positively influence host country national employees but communication and interpersonal skills
also matter to the greater extent to influence HCN employees as if manager communicate
properly with employees and transfer headquarter culture in an effective way it become easy to
manage cultural differences in an organization. It is also analyzed that hypothesis about impact
of expatriate managers on HCN employees attitude and behavior is high (Malik, Cooper-
Thomas, & Zikic, 2014).
Researchers focus on the HCN employees attitude and organization identification and all
the factors are related to expatriate managers abilities. If expatriate manager has the ability to
influence HCN employees, higher OI can be achieved and if they are not able to influence them
there is lack of coordination and commitment by HCN employees this might leads to failure of
subsidiary operations. From that it is analyzed that role of expatriate managers is important and
the companies need to focus on training and development of skills of expatriate managers before
sending them to handle overseas subsidiaries (Patriotta, Castellano, & Wright, 2013).

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Findings
The major drawback of this article that is identified from the analysis is that the article
focuses on host country national employees and cross cultural motivation. The factors of cross
cultural motivation cannot be measured and can only be observed by the management. So it is
important to set some parameters that help in defining the cross cultural motivation so that
developing expatriate managers can focus on those parameters and effectively manage cultural
differences.
The findings from the analysis of this article are that cross cultural management can be
successful with two key elements that are expatriate managers cross cultural motivation and
understanding local culture so that HCN employees can easily adjust and adapt the headquarter
culture in overseas subsidiaries. It is found from article that expatriate managers who are highly
cross cultural motivated support HCN employees more and bring harmony in the organization so
that coordination between culture of headquarters and subsidiaries can be maintained
Practical implication
The journal provides knowledge about expatriates managers who are cross cultural
motivated can positively influence host country nation employees and their behavior is affected
by the practices and policies that expatriate managers follows. This brings coordination between
headquarters and subsidiaries. Using this information from journal article, organization can focus
on training and motivating their managers for cross cultural aspects and can train their expatriate
managers about the host county culture. This article helps in to give guidance about how they
can manage cultural differences by focusing on building relationship with HCN employees and
changing their leadership styles as per the cultural factors of the country. In a nutshell, this article

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is based on the role of expatriate managers in molding and motivating HCN employees and
bringing high organization identification so that overall productivity can be increased. So with
that organizations can use this information and train its expatriate managers to stay motivated
and understand host country culture in order to influence behavior of HCN employees.
Conclusion
It is concluded from the above analysis of article that expatriate manager’s plays major
role in influencing behavior and attitude of HCN employees. Host country national employees
are most likely affect by the cross cultural motivation level of expatriate mangers, as this leads to
higher organization identification and this resultant in higher productivity. Further it is added that
the role of expatriate is not only limited to coordinating between headquarters and subsidiaries
rather the cross cultural management by managers require understanding of local cultures,
changing policies and practices to support the local culture. Further using theories and
implication of cross cultural management related to expatriates it is concluded that expatriate
managers who are highly cross cultural motivated support HCN employees more and bring
harmony in the organization so that coordination between culture of headquarters and
subsidiaries can be maintained. From the analysis and discussion it can be said that cross cultural
motivation is considered as an important factor while choosing an expatriate manager as this has
major influence on HNC employee’s attitude and HCN employees organization identification.

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References
Ahlowalia, S., Tiwary, D., & Jha, A. (2014). Employee engagement: A structured theoretical
review. The International Journal of Business and Management, 2, 309–317.
Barner-Rasmussen, W., Ehrnrooth, M., Koveshnikov, A., & Mäkelä, K. (2014). Cultural and
language skills as resources for boundary spanning within the MNC. Journal of
International Business Studies, 45, 886–905. https://doi.org/b84n
Epitropaki, O. (2013). A multi-level investigation of psychological contract breach and
organizational identification through the lens of perceived organizational membership:
Testing a moderatedmediated model. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 65–86.
Lee, J.-Y., Bachrach, D. G., & Lewis, K. (2014). Social network ties, transactive memory, and
performance in groups. Organization Science, 25, 951–967
Mäkelä, K., Andersson, U., & Seppälä, T. (2012). Interpersonal similarity and knowledge
sharing within multinational organizations. International Business Review, 21, 439–451
Malik, A. R., Cooper-Thomas, H. D., & Zikic, J. (2014). The neglected role of cultural
intelligence in recent immigrant newcomers’ socialization. International Journal of Cross
Cultural Management, 14, 195–213
Oh,H., Lee,S., & Oh,S.(2018).Expatriate managers cross cultural motivation and host country
national employees attitude. Social Behavior and Personality,46(5),841-860.
Patriotta, G., Castellano, A., & Wright, M. (2013). Coordinating knowledge transfer: Global
managers as higher-level intermediaries. Journal of World Business, 48, 515–526

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Quintane, E., & Carnabuci, G. (2016). How do brokers broker? Tertius gaudens, tertius iungens,
and the temporality of structural holes. Organization Science, 27, 1343–1360