A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Management in Business Executive Coaching
Johannesburg, 2017 / Since the lifting of the international sanctions and relaxation of capital controls, South Africa has caught up with the rest of the world in terms of globalisation. This has resulted in a number of South African companies opening job opportunities in other markets. Previous research has highlighted the creation of job opportunities in other markets as an indication of the continuous need for expatriates in future.
The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of executives taking international assignments in South African multinational corporations, and to examine how coaching can support the experience. This study looked at the experiences of expatriates in all three phases of expatriation, that is, (1) to explore the experiences of expatriate executives prior to taking international assignments in South African multinational corporations and understand how coaching can support that experience, (2) to explore the experiences of expatriate executives during the assignment in South African multinational corporations and understand how coaching can support that experience and lastly (3) to explore the repatriation experiences of executives in South African multinational corporations and understand how coaching can support that experience.
Qualitative research methodology was chosen to explore the expatriates’ experiences and the world in which they live. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents from three South African multinational corporates (MNCs) in telecommunications, oil and hospitality industries. Out of sixteen respondents, three were Human Resource (HR) managers whose responsibility it is to administer and manage global mobility in the three MNCs. Global mobility includes expatriates’ management.
The results of this study have implied that South African MNCs are inconsistent in terms of the way they prepare their expatriates before departure, support expatriates during the international assignments and repatriation. As a result of that, expatriates have also revealed mixed experienced in all three phases of
the expatriation journey. For example, during pre-departure, some have experienced a pleasant preparation, such as look-see-visits, medical examinations and CEO on-boarding programmes, whereas others were never prepared (thrown in the deep-end). The misalignment between head office objectives and host country’s objectives came out as the most frustrating experience by the majority of the respondents. In terms of the last phase of the repatriation cycle, the results of this study suggest that a repatriation strategy is ineffective or non-existent in South African MNCs. Expatriates come back and get absorbed by competition as a result of the lack of a repatriation strategy. The glue to the findings of this research implies that coaching does have a critical role to play in all three phases of expatriation, that is, during pre-departure, during the assignment and during repatriation.
The key message to South African MNCs is, if they want to use expatriates as their vehicle to succeed in global markets, they must involve former expatriates in crafting their realistic, practical expatriates’ strategy which must be communicated and applied to all expatriates and host companies. / MT2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/23047 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mnengisa, Basareng Isabella Bonga |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (xii, 172 leaves), application/pdf |
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