Short-term International Assignments

Multinational companies (MNCs) face an increasing need for leaders with international job experience, openness towards people with other cultural backgrounds and receptiveness to other ways of doing business within the organization. Traditionally, such cross-cultural skills and abilities are acquired during long-term expatriation and nurtured through training and mentoring. However, long-term assignments are expensive for companies (Stahl & Björkman, 2006, pp. 167–168) and strenuous for many employees. The HR manager’s remarks above raise a relevant question as to whether cultural sensitivity can be nurtured through a number of shorter stays in several regions, in particular because many international assignees have had internships abroad or studied at foreign universities and thus are expected to have quite a different take on working in multicultural business contexts than their parents’ generation.