Understanding Expatriate Experience Through Their Identity Shifts and Perceptions About Organizational Culture

The rise of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) has received more attention recently in the international business field while expatriates in EMNEs, a strategic driving force, has been overlooked. In order to fill the research gap, this study chose expatriates in Huawei, a Chinese multinational networking, telecommunications equipment and services company, as the research targets to conduct a qualitative study and further analyze their expatriate experience. Expatriates' identities and their perceptions about organizational culture have been examined in this study. The Tridimensional Expatriate Identity Model (Adams and Van de Vijver, 2015) is applied to examine expatriates' identity shifts while the Five Window framework (Levin, 2000) is adjusted and employed to foster a better understanding of expatriates' perceptions about organizational culture. The findings suggest that expatriates in Huawei have very limited exposure to host countries and societies, which results in limited transformations regarding expatriates' identities. Even though expatriates' identities and perceptions about organizational culture remain stable, one shift that is common among interviewees is that expatriates gain professional capacities owing to the changing job roles and interpersonal relationships. The interview process revealed potential reasons for why expatriates' identities and perceptions about organizational culture remained stable while abroad. These include 1) limited social network 2) language 3) high workload 4) the given meaning of "expatriation". Additionally, the influence and repercussions of this organizational stability on Huawei's organizational development are discussed. The discovery of these specific identity effects and the resulting perception of organizational culture, due to the expatriation policy, have managerial implications that are discussed. As an exploratory study, the thesis shed a new light on how to better understand expatriate experience in the context of EMNEs. It further emphasizes the need for more research in this field due to the differences between expatriates in EMNEs and DMNEs.