The international organisations are more multinational and more multi-cultural than any multinational corporation (MNC). They have people working in a wider range of geographical locations and sometimes in very different circumstances than any MNC. And yet, whilst there has been a lot of research into “expatriation” in the MNCs, there has been comparatively little into international mobility in the international organisations.

 

This is beginning to change and we are beginning to learn more about what is, for many HRM specialists, one of the most complicated and contentious areas of their work.

 

Of course, many of the messages coming from the latest research into the private sector organisations apply to the international organisations too. Thus, a recent article in the Economist 6/24/2006 (Travelling more lightly - staffingglobalisation) found that many companies are sending more people abroad than ever before. But they are trying to keep down the costs of doing so. Lots of employees (particularly in the West) are unwilling or simply refuse to go abroad. They may not want to remove children from school; or their partners may be unwilling to sacrifice their own careers. There are expatriates from a wider range of countries than ever before. According to the Economist, with a turn of phrase that will cause wry amusement amongst HRM specialists in the international organisations:

Although women remain a minority, it is an increasing minority. Young employees are being offer assignments in other countries; partly because it is cheaper to send childless people. They have no need of a large home and no offspring to be educated. For people in their 40s in particular, spouses' careers and parenthood can be obstacles to moving.

 

With some notable exceptions, the selection of people to work in another country remains somewhat arbitrary: what researchers have called “the coffee machine system of recruitment” is still common. Repatriation to the home country is still not handled well.

 

Most of these private sector experiences will be uncomfortably familiar to HR specialists in international organisations. Other ideas will be less common. Much of the interest in these organisations in new ideas originated in the private sector. Thus, the growth in programmes to prepare expatriates to cope in their new country, the increase in mentoring programmes for them, the moves to deal with partner employment, the development of training to assist intercultural working and the attention being paid to reintegration of those who have completed assignments, all began in the private sector and are now spreading to the international organisations. Some international organisations have taken on board the idea, now common amongst a growing number of European MNCs, that no-one without experience in a number of different countries can become a top executive.

 

But, of course, the concept of international mobility in such organisations is not the same. Their backgrounds are often very different for a start.

They tend to be “internationalists”. Usually they will speak several languages, many of them have had experience of living in a number of countries. Many of their professional staff are frequent flyers, others are continually moving from assignment to assignment. Some are what are called “3^rd culture kids” or, in a less kindly phrase, “international brats”. Significantly, the values of international assignees will be different from the values of those in MNCs.

There are also differences in context. Often, only a small proportion of the professional staff will be citizens of the country in which the HQ is located. For them being at headquarters is an international assignment. Therefore, again, being asked to move to another country has different connotations than it does for many MNC expatriates.

The type of assignment may also be of a different nature from the typical MNC assignment. Most MNC expatriates move from one big sophisticated city to another, well-paid and living in comfortable conditions, mixing with senior government officials and other important policy makers. So do some staff in the international organisations. But many, in peacekeeping, food or health aid, poverty alleviation or refugee work will be sent to very different assignments: dangerous places where they might be, and some are, killed in the course of their work, where they may be based in squalid and stressful conditions, spending much of their time with some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people on the planet. On many of these assignments families cannot be risked; they have to stay at home or in some nearby country. Most of these assignments will be expected to be of much shorter duration than typical expatriate assignments.

Inevitably, therefore, there are also problems of perceived equity. Field staff know that there are other people in the same organisation and on the same grade living very comfortably in Geneva, Rome, Vienna or wherever the HQ is based. Furthermore, unless there is some movement between these HQ and field locations there are dangers of undue stress being put on the field staff, the development of a “two organisations” feeling, and concerns about whether HQ is taking policy decisions with full understanding of conditions in the field.

For the international organisations, therefore, there is much in common, and therefore much to be learnt from the way that MNCs manage their expatriates.