Women Managers: Female Expatriates - Research Paper Example

 Women Managers: Female Expatriates Since the beginning of time, man has moved from one place to another in search for better home, more food and better atmosphere. This search has changed in the modern times and today companies and large industries are expanding their offices all-round the globe to get better growth in their organizations. Multinational corporations have paved ways for expansions of their offices for executing operations and procuring projects. Employees of these companies who stay there for longer periods become expats of those countries. These expatriates accept the country as their homes and make sure to execute the operation they have been sent for. Women have been very empowering in terms of management control and execution of top notch projects. The gender partiality does not exist anymore, in fact in the current trend; women are more preferred to be sent as expats and representatives of the company. There are multiple reasons that are associated with female success as expats, but the most common answer is today females are considered as more persuasive business leaders than men. ‘Multi-national companies (MNCs) need competent expatriates who possess a wide range of technical and interpersonal characteristics. Expanding the talent pool to include women provides a tactical advantage or these companies’ (Paula Caligiuri, and Wayne F. Cascio. Page 35. 2000). Today women are seen as front runners for most of the jobs and they are completing successful projects in all parts of the country. The success of female expats lies in their self confidence and the ability to use their skill sets for company growth. The success of female expats depends on certain crucial factors. These aspects are part of the personality and technical dynamics of a female expat. The personality traits and organization’s support are very significant features female expat’s success. More so ever, if the female is married, than family support becomes highly important for the female as personal negativity in most scenarios affect professional outcomes. The country in which the female expats is sent, the attitude of the host nationals becomes a nagging factor for female expats. However the fact exists that female expats are as capable as their male counterparts. Still lot of MNC’s women has a lot of advantages when it comes to their international projects. The very first advantage is the factor of visibility. When a woman is stationed abroad the clients get more curious about female managers and always want to meet them. Secondly female expats are experts in interpersonal skills and locals of both genders tend to indulge in conversations as people tend to talk on broad topics with women managers. When a woman manager enters an international office, the local staff to clients gives more of special treatments when compared to their male counterparts. The best advantage however is the assumption factor of the locals. In most countries, it is assumed that in an international office of any MNC, a male manager would be found and comprehended, but when a female manager comes into picture , clients and local staff believes that the female has to be the best of the best, as the company would had send a male manager instead. Because of this the female expats receive more respect due to this assumption. The smarter corporations have understood the salient advantages of sending females for international ventures and have been successfully get their operations done though them. There are lots of myths that surround female’s positivity and interest for taking up an international operation in many companies and these companies suffer because they fail to extract and optimize output from their female managers. The following will shed light on a myth that is mostly followed by these companies: ‘The myth of corporate resistance was true; half of the companies surveyed do hesitate to send women abroad. Four times as many firms are reluctant to select women for international assignments as are hesitant to promote into domestic management positions’ (Adler, Nancy J. Page 1.1993). This company suffers on internal human resource skills and there is always and an air of chauvinism attached in the company. Another myth that is blatantly associated with them is that female themselves don’t want to have international careers, but when a survey was conducted of 1000 graduating MBA students, than it was concluded that there was not much of difference in replies of male and female prospective managers and today choosing an international job was no longer taboo for women. Female managers when given an opportunity to execute operation domestic or international, they have always been one step ahead if they have sound knowledge of technical skills. But these managers have a certain sets of characteristics that have to be realized by the organization. Where the MNC is always looking for out more confident men for their operations, similarly there have been more surge for certain sets of traits that women have that makes them material for international handling. These traits are not uncommon amongst women, but without having them in their personality, it would make their job difficult for leadership responsibilities. Women that have to be selected have to showcase some kind of grip in technical or leadership skills for them to be chosen for international positions. Women who succeed in international operations are more self confident about their knowledge and know their strengths and weakness. This attribute is a must for females who wish to take up managerial positions outside their home country. The main characteristic of female expats is their ability of being flexible and creating an aura of comfort ability around them. This characteristic helps female expats to handle and diffuse situations that might go wrong with the client in the foreign city, due to unforeseen conditions. Another factor that helps derive success in female expats in having in-country support, where the female can always look up to whenever she is confused about issues in office or local. There are a lot of gender stereotypes that are associated with female expats. The reasons behind them are more of ignorance and chauvinism, compared to doubting the ability of execution of the female manager. The following will explain the unintelligent theories that revolve around female expats and will also show a major stereotype that is associated with them: ‘Stereotypical thinking and double standards become especially evident when there is a tendency for organizations to confuse the role of female expatriates managers with that of the expatriate partner, whose failure to adapt has been prime reasons for premature expatriate returns’ (Katharina Hartl. Page 34.2003). Wives of most expatriate find it difficult to adjust in developing nations and the male manager has to return because of domestic issues. Corporations stereotype the issue by drawing parallels of adjustment between female expats and expatriate’s wives. The level of adjustment and thinking is very much different when it comes to being a manager in an international office. Another stereotype that is associated is of married females. If a female accepts the role or shows interests for the position, it means that on a domestic front there is better understanding between her and the spouse. And today this is a reality with many married female expats taking contracts in international avenues. Companies get worried about single women managers when they have to be reporting from places like Thailand, where it is considered to be ideal to have male managers. But female expats have broken all barriers and stereotypes and have even opened and executed operations in countries like Bangladesh and parts of Africa. Some of the top notch leaders of the companies are females and they are creating waves by raking in profits for organizations. Like any expat, female expats have to deal with children and their spouses too. This is a natural course of events that take place with both the genders. Children always have a deeper connection to their mothers and due to this reasons, separations can be emotionally stressful for the child, but with technology at dispense, the distance gets shortened by interaction via internet or phone. In scenarios where the female expat has a better understanding at home, the male spouse and children tend to shift with the female manager, thus giving more confidence to the lady of the house. If children shift with their mother, they face problems of joining new schools in a foreign country, but this does not hamper their education it only brings in a change in the pattern. These factors are indeed important for the female managers, but they are no longer deterring. These professionals today have learnt the value of employing few years in their jobs for them secure their futures. However, managers with pre-school children have some issues, but once enough resources are bent for their children, they make the decisions of moving ahead. It can only be assessed that today a female manager is more than capable of acquiring, procuring and executing operations. What once were considered as disadvantages, today females are using the same issues for their own advantage. Organizations that have send females for international ventures have been more than happy with the result. Work Cited: 1) Paula Caligiuri & Wayne F. Cascio, “Sending Women on Global Assignments”. 2000. http://www.chrs.rutgers.edu/pub_documents/Paula_15.pdf 2) Adler, Nancy J, “Women managers in global economy”.1993 http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/careers-career-development/402095-1.html 3) Katharina Hartl, “Expatriate women managers: gender, culture, and career”.2003. Rainer Hampp Verlag publishing 4) Henry lane, Joseph DiStefano & Martha Maznevski, “International management behavior: text, readings, and cases”.2005. Wiley Blackwell Publishing 5) Nancy J. Adler, Allison Gundersen, “International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior”. 2008. Cengage Learning 6) Colleen A. Ward, Stephen Bochner, Adrian Furnham, “ The psychology of culture shock”.2001. Routledge 7) Manab Thakur, B N Srivastava, “International Management”.2001. Tata McGraw-Hill. 8) Hilary Harris, Chris Brewster, Paul Sparrow, “International Human resource management”.2003.CIPD publishing 9) Blythe J. McGarvie, Robert Kraft, “Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World”.2009. John Wiley and Sons 10) Aswathappa & Dash, “International Human Resource Management”. 2007. Tata McGraw-Hill 11) Michael R. Czinkota, Ilkka A. Ronkainen, Michael H. Moffett, “Interntaional Business”.2000. Dryden Press Read More