Inpatriate managers: Are they being effectively utilized as global talent?

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Miriam Moeller,Jane Maley
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21913

DIMENSIONS OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Inpatriate managers: Are they being effectively utilized

as global talent?

Jane Maley

1

| Miriam Moeller

2

1

School of Management and Marketing,

Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

2

School of Business, Economics and Law, The

University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Correspondence

Jane Maley, School of Management and

Marketing, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst,

NSW 2795, Australia.

Email: jmaley@csu.edu.au

This study questions the return on investment of inpatriate talent. The fundamental rationale of

this qualitative study is the need to more consciously manage the talent found in an increasingly

diverse global talent pool. As part of this pool, an inpatriate is positioned to add operational

value at headquarters, yet face a tremendously different set of hurdles compared to their more

traditional counterpart, the expatriate. In light of the differences in characteristics and obstacles

faced, we challenge extant literature on the appropriateness of existing talent practices for

inpatriate talent. We question whether more conscious choices in management practices can

bring greater mutual benefits to the inpatriate and multinational corporation.

KEYWORDS

attribution theory, human resource climate, inpatriation

1|INTRODUCTION

Many multinational corporations (MNCs) have struggled to keep up

with the increasing demand for skilled global employees, and as a con-

sequence, global talent acquisition, retention, and management have

become a major challenge for them (Khilji, Tarique, & Schuler, 2015).

However, one way that MNCs have kept abreast of the growing

demand for global talent is to increase their level of global transfers

(Tarique & Schuler, 2010). The expansion of global transfers has fos-

tered not only an increase in expatriation, the traditional form of inter-

national assignment from headquarters (HQ) to subsidiaries, but also

other types of assignments, and in particular in the relocation of sub-

sidiary employees to HQ, termed inpatriation (Collings, 2014; Harvey,

Reiche, & Moeller, 2011b; Moeller, Maley, Harvey, & Kiessling, 2016;

Peterson, 2003; Reiche, 2012). Certainly, over the past decade, there

has been an increased scholarly interest in the inpatriation of subsidi-

ary staff into the HQ of MNCs (Collings, McDonnell, Gunnigle, &

Lavelle, 2010; Harvey, Novicevic, Buckley, & Fung, 2005; Reiche,

2006; Tharenou & Harvey, 2006), reflecting a growth in the overall

inpatriate population (Reiche, 2011).

Inpatriate managers are increasingly appearing as important ele-

ments of the global mobility talent pool (Moeller et al., 2016) as they

present an opportunity to expand HQ knowledge on overseas opera-

tions and generally enable the creation of a more cohesive organiza-

tional global mind-set (Harvey, Mayerhofer, Hartmann, & Moeller,

2010). Yet the inpatriate manager remains rather elusive. While there

is an emerging body of literature on inpatriation, it is largely concep-

tual, and there has been very little empirical research in regards to

inpatriate managers (Moeller & Reiche, 2016). Existing conceptual

research tells us that these managers come from a diversity of back-

grounds and they ostensibly offer a readily available internal source of

global talent (Peltokorpi, 2015).

Outwardly, inpatriates may appear similar to expatriate managers,

and several of the problems arising with inpatriates may seem compa-

rable, for example, coping with cultural and/or economic distance

between countries (Mäkelä, Sumelius, Höglund, & Ahlvik, 2012) or

stress due to acculturation to the local culture (Mayerhofer, Spar-

row, & Zimmermann, 2008). However, many of the structural charac-

teristics of inpatriation clearly differ from expatriation (Harvey,

Speier, & Novicevic, 1999). For example, Mäkelä et al. (2012) have

pointed to the challenges emerging from bias and the impact of dis-

tance as disadvantages for subsidiary talent in being identified and

transferred to HQ. Harvey, Reiche, and Moeller (2011) found that

trust building between the inpatriate and the HQ could be challenging,

yet it is important for successful inpatriation. The point here is that

inpatriation is not simply expatriation in reverse. Inpatriates present

distinctive challenges, and a thorough examination of the “worth”of

this type of global employee is in order. Accordingly, this study exam-

ines the effectiveness of inpatriation to HQ and empirically examines

the following broad but necessary research questions (RQs):

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21913

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2018;60:647–659. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 647