Is it the end of the era of Western expatriate managers?

A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly by Manpower CEO, Jeffrey A Joerres, argued that the era of the Western expatriate manager is ending. 

Reasons given included the “notoriously bad” cultural adaptation of Western expatriates, the career limitations placed on locals by having expats in senior positions, and a costly dearth of intimate local knowledge.  All are valid reasons.  And all things that nobody in the global mobility industry wants to see.

To answer these issues the article proposes a “reverse expatriate” strategy where local managers of Western-based companies are rotated through the Western businesses core operations shadowing the local leaders in the Western businesses operations.

Such a training or mentoring system for emerging market locals to spend time in the developed market location is an excellent strategy and one that a number of global organizations have been pursuing for many years.  In the mid 90s I conducted cultural briefings for ABB executives from China who were sent to the sister operation in Australia for experience.  A number of those executives were mentored on their return to China by the expats on site and today are in senior leadership positions in the China operations. 

In Australia a colleague and I delivered training for BHP Billiton employees - part of a program entitled “Green Shoots” hiring new graduates from the emerging resource markets of the world and moving them to countries with established mining operations for training. in anticipation of their return home to work in the developing business as future leaders in that country.

BUT some words of warning about such a strategy. 

The issues of adapting to local culture will be as real for the emerging market future leaders as they were for the Western expats.  And not just for the expatriate but also for the leaders they are shadowing.  The success of the training or mentoring relationship will be dependent on good relationships developing between the trainee and the colleagues they will be shadowing.  And a recognition that the learning is a two-way process.  Such relationships will need high cultural intelligence on both sides, 

And here is my next issue with the strategy as described in the article.  Don’t call such trainees “reverse expats”!  An expatriate is someone who lives outside their own country – as these future leaders are doing while they are on their assignment.  Separate terminology could lead to separate conditions and rewards.  A two tiered expatriate system is a system which doesn’t work well within a truly global company. 

Instead a truly global company will have a number of different objectives for expatriate assignments.  Some will be the traditional expat sent to introduce changes in systems or technology but with the added goal of identifying and mentoring the potential future leaders. 

There will also be expats whose core purpose for their assignment is their own learning and development –whether that is learning more about emerging markets, (the issues and problems as well as the culture and language) or the developed markets (the issues and problems as well as the culture and language).  In this way the future leaders of the global company will have a clearer knowledge and perspective on the whole organization. 

So –is it the end of the era of the Western expat?  If that expat has low cultural intelligence and believes they are on assignment to solve a specific issue or to bring about changes while remaining aloof from the locals and the local culture, and receiving a vastly elevated rewards package while doing it –that era has probably already ended in many places around the world!