‘The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates’ by Harzing (1995) is a very influential article, in both academic and professional environments. People refer to it in many reasons. Starting the discussion with identifying the problem mentioned there, we are going to dwell upon the reasons why scholars and business people use this article as the basis for their research and practice.
The main idea of the article is to explain the ways how expatriates may be successful, why multinational companies fail and what should be done in order to reduce the risky rate connected with working abroad.
Dwelling upon the importance of the article, it should be pointed to the great research conducted by the author. Starting the discussion with the Buckley and Brooke’s (1992) statement about the rate of expatriate failure in developed and developing countries, the author gets to the discussion of the references used in the article.
This gives an opportunity to understand what specific ideas pushed the authors on the data they refer to. The discussion of the references with the particular statements in the original text is a great analysis of the possible failures. Harzing (1995) used such references as Desatnick and Bennett (1978) or Holmes and Piker (1980) to understand where Buckley and Brooke’s (1992) took the numbers they used in their article.
Further reading of the article and closer consideration of the references used by the authors has created a great work which has been comprised in the article. Harzing (1995) does not just review the articles devoted to the high risk rate of expatriates, he tries to understand why the research in the sphere are so numerous and why they still remain up to date.
The inability of the authors to consider the reason for the problem and to find an appropriate decision makes scholars and researchers refer to the issue. Harzing (1995) tried to do all possible to find out the truth and to stop research in the field. Having considered many articles which have been devoted to the issue, Harzing (1995) also tried to find the connection between those article.
Harzing (1995) reviewed many papers devoted to the empirical research about the mentioned theme. It should be said that much attention was paid to such references as Tung’s discussions, Brewster’s (1991) explanation and Mendenhall and Oddou (1988) research.
Finally, trying to underline the importance of the article and the reasons why many scholars and business people refer to it is in the way how the data is presented. The author does not only provide the review of the article, the connection is shown which can be used for creating the cause and effect points. The final benefit of this article is the scheme which shows the dependency of the research articles and the way how and why these articles are connected.
The author created a sort of a problem-tree which has created a chronological order for the research and the way how the data is connected. Therefore, having considered in detail the references used in the articles, the reasons for the numerous research on the problem may be find out. The research is so numerous not because the issue is too difficult, most of the authors just reviewed the articles of their colleagues trying to point at the problem without conducting original research for searching for the ways out.
Reference List
Brewster, C. (1991). The management of expatriates in multicultural corporations. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
Buckley, P.J. & Brooke, M. Z. (1992). International business studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Desatnick, R. A., & Bennett, M. L. (1978). Human resource management in the multinational countries. New York: Nichols.
Harzing, A. (1995). The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates. Human Resource Management, 6, 457-475.
Holmes, W., & Piker, F. K. (1980). Expatriate failure: Prevention rather than cure. Personnel Management, 12, 30-33.
Mendenhall, M., & Oddou, G. (1988). The overseas assignment: A practical look. Business Horizons, 78-84.