Middle management in a foreign land: experiences of Italian

middle managers working as expatriates.

Luca Ottonello

Dissertation submitted to Oxford Brookes University

for the partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

October 2010

I

DECLARATION

This dissertation is a product of my own work and is the result of nothing done

in collaboration.

I consent to the University’s free use including online reproduction, including

electronically, and including adaptation for teaching and education activities of

any whole or part item of this dissertation.

Luca Ottonello

Page length: 100 pages

II

AKNOLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank first of all Sylwia Ciuk for her immense

patience in helping me develop this dissertation, knowing my academic

writing skills needed her help every step of the way to get to the appropriate

standard. Special thanks should also be given to Dr. Roberto Ottonello for

providing the necessary finances, connections and access to gather the

necessary resources for this dissertation. The author would also like to thank

Dr. Carcauso for helping him obtain all the necessary interviews in such short

notice and always being accommodation in the author requests all the time.

Furthermore he would like to thank Stephanie Cabiddu for the work done in

helping the author transcribing the majority of the interviews done for this

dissertation. The author would also like to thank Carlotta Ottonello for the

work done on some of the transcriptions knowing she had to sacrifice some of

her holidays to do so. He would also like to thank Marina Mercenaro in

supporting him both in surviving and getting through the long work that this

dissertation has been. And finally the author would like to thank Dr. Joy

Butcher for all the psychological support and great help she provided

throughout the dissertation.

III

ABSTRACT

Middle management in a foreign land: experiences of Italian middle

managers working as expatriates.

Luca Ottonello

October 2010

The following research is aiming at the qualitative study of middle

management expatriate experiences. This research aims at analysing the

expatriate middle managers and focusing on their experiences, how they

interact with different cultures, their reasons to be there, their struggles and

anything that may shape the way they experience their permanence in a host

country. The sources to be used for the study will be Italian middle managers

working abroad for their company, this will give a good view of how southern

Europeans behave as expatriates, which is by its self an under researched

area. Sources will be based on primary data as there is very little secondary

data available on the selected topic as the literature review will explain. The

research is not a comparative approach between top and middle

management abroad, but an explanation of the detachment of middle

management study, from top management in the area of experience as

expatriates which is under researched. Hopefully this will start a new area of

study which will benefit the middle managerial community working in host

countries.

IV

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

AKNOLEDGEMENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

ABSTRACT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.1 Theme of the dissertation 5

1.2 Middle management expatriate experience 6

2 LITERATURE REVIEW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.1 Introduction to the literature 10

2.2 The research type and analysis of the expatriate experience 13

2.2.1 Positivistic research as compared to qualitative 13

2.2.2 Expatriate experience analysis 14

2.3 Stages of adaptation in expatriate assignment 15

2.3.1 The ‘Expatriate U Curve’ 16

2.3.2. the stages of the curve 16

2.4 The problems faced by the expatriate manager and the family 19

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2.4.1 adjustment problems 19

2.4.2. The spouse 23

2.5 Problems deriving from the background culture 25

2.5.1. Inability to cope with larger responsibilities 25

2.5.2 Expatriate experience, the cultural background influence 27

2.6 Summary and observations 30

3 METHODOLOGY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.1 Introduction to the methodology 33

3.2 Research approach 33

3.2.1 Philosophy adapted 34

3.3 Data collection 35

3.3.1 Obtaining participants collaboration 36

3.3.4 Research objectives 37

3.3.4 Individuals chosen for sampling 37

3.3.5 Questions 39

3.4 Interviews 40

3.5 Findings structure and data analysis 41

3.6 Access, ethics and reliability 42

3.6.2 Ethics 42

3.6.3 Reliability and generalisation 43

3.7 Limitations 44

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3.8 Summary 45

4 FINDINGS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4.1 Introduction to findings 47

4.2 Support and training of middle managers 48

4.3 Top in the office middle on the field 57

4.4 Middle man is not the same as top man 62

4.5 Summary 67

5 DISCUSSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

5.1 Introduction to the discussion 69

5.2 Middle management expatriate experiences 69

5.2.1 Abandonment and isolation 70

5.2.2 Being an expendable resource 71

5.2.3 Being the lone middle man 73

5.2.4 Lack of expertise and training 76

5.3.5 Endangerment and cultural awareness 78

5.4 Summary 81

6 CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

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6.1 Research objectives 83

6.1.1 Middle management expatriate experience 83

APPENDIX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

REFERENCE LIST. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Theme of the dissertation

The following dissertation deals with the topic of middle management

expatriates experiences abroad. The author researched the area of expatriate

experiences, a field that has received increasingly attention from researchers

due to the companies having several branches in host countries. The

expatriate has become one of the main areas of company constant

application and an area of high investment risk as it has been stated that

more than 25 to 70% (Black et al. 1991) of expatriate assignments fail and

have to deal with early returns back home. The research done on the topic of

expatriation is quite wide due to the previously stated need for such research

now days, it normally focuses on cultural adaptation (Richards 1996), stages

of adaptation (Lysgaard 1955) and many specific areas which involve the

psychological and physical adaptation and problems through which the

expatriates go through while on assignment. The author has identified an area

in the expatriate experience body of research that has been overlooked or

superficially researched; this was the experiences of middle managers

expatriates. This is where the research done by the author comes in, it has

been focused only on the middle manager expatriate experience giving a

clear differentiation between middle and top as previously supported by Sims

(2003), resulting in clear differences as the dissertation will explain in the

following chapters. The author has created a short introductory chapter which

makes the reader understand the reasons behind and the research its self in

the next few chapters.

5

This last is an explanation why the author decided to explore this area of

management and to explain the background and nature of expatriation and

the experiences of managers, plus the problems specific to the area of middle

management. This chapter will explain the following: why the author showed

interest on the topic of middle management and the personal reasons to start

a research on the topic. The topic of experience as qualitative data and its

uses and purpose of the analysis of the experience. A set of reasons why this

area of management in expatriate context needs to be analysed and areas

where such analysis is absent. A set of questions aimed at answering the lack

of information on the middle management experience as expatriates. The

positive outcome of having a research on such area.

1.3 Middle management expatriate experience

The area of expatriate experience has been researched only superficially

according to Osland (1995). In many cases it was researched using a

quantitative approach which denotes a lack of qualitative research on the

topic, such as empirical evidence instead of qualitative evidence which the

author intends to use. The research may give new ideas on how to operate

with expatriates which seem to be the most common job situations in a

globalised world now-days. There have been many out branched studies on

top management expatriates, expatriates in or from China and U.S.

concentration on their experiences abroad. But very little has been done for

European middle manager expatriates experiences abroad and very little

research has been done on the specific area of middle management. The

reason may be that the middle management experience has been mistakenly

considered the equivalent of the top management experience, or there may

have been research in areas where the middle management was treated as

equal to the top management, or the authors may have analysed middle

6

management but just generalised it as management. According to the

author’s findings there are differences in both problems and areas of work,

this may be due to the company or the culture and location researched.

Despite some limitations in the data, there was evidence which made it clear

that middle management is a separate research area on its own. The author

intends to cover to a certain extent an overlooked area of the literature which

will be very evidently highlighted in the next chapter.

As the area of expatriation is so wide, the author has decided to concentrate

on the single topic of expatriate experience. This seems to be the one least

researched as it creates a need for direct contact with expatriates and their

physical time to answer to questionnaires and interviews. This area has the

least level of information available, the next few paragraphs will deal with the

topic of direct experience and why it is such an important area of expatriation

studies.

There is a area where more research may be done in the expatriate research

as the next chapter will outline, the middle management has not been

addressed in the study of expatriates. Regardless the different situation,

different aims and nature of middle management compared to top

management, the two have been often clustered together in the research

done on expatriation. There are situations where experience has been

analysed but very rarely or not at all on the area of middle management.

The author spotted a need for more detailed analysis of the middle

management experience, the contemporary literature on the topic doesn’t

specify or differentiate the differences between top and middle management

experiences abroad, the author has critically analysed the literature on the

topic and highlighted areas of interest that may need further research or that

7

have not been looked at yet. There research focused on the way the

expatriates perceived their experience as middle managers and the

recollections of those experiences focusing on the feelings that they had

about the company, their abilities, the country and their situation as a whole.

Therefore the research is focused on an area of research which is rarely

looked at and that creates many opportunities for further studies due to this.

The objectives of this paper will be the answers to the following questions:

To critically review the literature on middle management expatriate

experiences.

To explore the experiences of expatriates working on middle

management positions.

To explore the implications for organisations that send their middle

level managers on expatriate assignments.

The author believes that this research will open a new area for further studies

to be conducted as the role of the middle management has been often

underestimated or overlooked by the academic bodies. The businesses do

need to know how to deal with their problems and to train them according to

the needs, that they can gather by analysing the experience of the middle

managers that they send abroad. This research will open a new area of

management which will enable the middle managers to have a better

understanding of their role as expatriates and give them a guideline on the

problems and challenges that they will face once abroad.

The dissertation will start by analysing the current body of literature on the

topic of middle management expatriate experiences, it will then be followed by

the methodology used to analysed the data, then the findings will be

presented and briefly explained, followed by the discussion in which the

8

findings will be thoroughly analysed and the conclusion in which the

dissertation objectives will be answered.

9

Chapter 2

Literature review

2.1 Introduction to the literature

There are many wide researches on several sections of expatriation which

vary from company expenses on expatriate management to the analysis of

female expatriate managers. The topic its self is extremely wide therefore the

author has decided to analyse only one of the main topics in detail. The area

of expatriate experience its self is quite wide as the experience branches out

in problems faces, company relationships and the expatriate’s psychological

endeavours. The topic that the author will analyse is the middle management

expatriate experience, this will be focused on an area which up till now has

been under researched due to many authors undergoing the research from a

top management angle or a company angle. The research will be based

specifically on middle managers and the literature review as a consequence

will be analysing every aspect of the expatriate experience general research

looking for areas where the middle management expatriate experience has

been analysed. Chapter two aims to synthesize the literature on the topic of

expatriation experience as the main topic, with particular emphasis on the

middle management experiences. In the first chapter, the author has

introduced the topic of expatriate experience, and gave reasons why there

should be more research done on middle management, in order to have a

more comprehensive set of information which gives the sense of what really

happens abroad to the middle management. This can be used towards the

improvement of effectiveness of a level of management, that has been left

practically untouched in the area of expatriate direct experiences abroad.

10

However the author found appropriate to branch out to different areas of

expatriation research due to the different topics that add to the analysis of the

experience. There has been a need to examine the literature on the U curve

by Lysgaard (1955) as in most of the literature examined is the main tool of

analysis and needs to be thoroughly understood. According to the review of

the literature carried out, the author has clearly identified a lack of information

on the area of middle management in the context of expatriates, making it

evident that there is very little research done on the topic. The wider concept

of expatriation is very highly researched especially from the point of view of

the companies adapting. The companies tend to look at the managers from

an external point observing them but not asking about their experiences, this

gives an external view, there is no insight in the reality of the way managers

work. The author needs to concentrate on the area of experience of the

expatriates from their own point of view, such material is very limited as it will

be evident throughout the literature review. The key elements of this literature

will be based on the different perspectives and topics that have been studied

until now, in order to identify areas where more research is needed and the

right perspective to utilise in this particular case:

The stages of adaptation in expatriate assignment, this sub section will

explain the theory of the U curve (Lysgaard 1955) which is directly connected

with the expatriate experience analysis due to its representation of the

expatriate psychological journey from the beginning to the end of the

expatriation period; such theory can be used to divide logically the experience

analysis and extrapolate the end results in a coherent way. The research type

and analysis of the expatriate experience, this sub section will cover the

approach of interpretation and analysis done on the topic by previous authors,

investigating the nature of the analysis, the different paradigms used and the

11

type of analysis its self; for example quantitative as opposed to qualitative and

the different advantages and disadvantages of each. The problems faced by

the expatriate manager and the family, this sub section will analyze problems

that arose from the previous studies on expatriate experience abroad and

reasons why these happened; the author will use this literature in order to

compare and contrast middle management problems to top management

which is the one normally analyzed and will try to understand if there are

similarities or differences between the two conceptions of problems.

Furthermore this longer literature section will be used by the author as

backbone of the entire dissertation basing most of the observations of the

analysis in the analytical chapter on previous theories and studies reviewed in

this core section which covers the psychological and practical aspects of the

experience of expatriates abroad. Problems deriving from the background

culture, this sub section has been created by the author in order to analyse

the effect that the expatriate background culture influences his or her

experience in a host country, as the research will be mainly based on an

Italian multinational, there will be a need to analyse the previous literature on

the problems or differences that cultural background create for the expatriate.

Women in expatriate management, this sub section is one that the author

considered very carefully, and decided just to mention as there are many

studies on gender differences (Hartl 2004), but they show an almost

imperceptible difference between genders apart from the fact that there is a

lack of women expatriate managers without actually giving the reasons for

this. On the other side an area where due to the difference in responsibilities

and training like middle management experience as expatriates hasn’t been

looked at. The next section will be dealing with the methods of analysis

commonly used for the topic of expatriate management experience.

12

2.2 The research type and analysis of the expatriate experience

2.2.1 Positivistic research as compared to qualitative

Following the problems represented in the commonly used method of the U

curve by Lysgaard (1955), the author has realised that many of the authors

using this method were taking a purely positivistic approach, which doesn’t

cover the experience of the expatriates themselves according to Osland

(1995) there has not been sufficient nor adequate research on the experience

side of the expatriation spectrum. According to Osland (1995) the research

has been done form a positivistic approach which ignores the experiences of

single expatriates and focuses on the general quantitative data forgetting the

value that the qualitative data could represent as it gives details not present in

quantitative. Other authors have also written about the problem of lack of

qualitative research, for example Richardson and McKenna (2002) have

talked of a shortage of qualitative research which could aid furthermore the

study on particular situations and experiences of individuals abroad; providing

details on which to base research on. The qualitative research according to

Osland (1995), can give rise to paradox analysis, which is impossible to

obtain trough the quantitative method of research, a paradox is a situation in

which the expatriate has to deal with a contradictory or mutually exclusive

situation having to mediate between two cultures facing many integrating

problems with the host country’s culture. Richards (1996) and Suutari and

Brewster (2001), have also emphasized the importance of qualitative analysis

in the finding and interpretation of paradoxes both in the immersion of the

expatriate in the host country culture and his adaptation and interpretation of

the culture. Richards (1996) and Suutari and Brewster (2001), also described

even if not directly how the different stages of the U curve although commonly

used, have the fault of not giving a qualitative description of how the

13

expatriate experiences the situation, as the theory divides the experience into

separate distinctive stages, while in the actual experience they are rarely

divided.

2.2.2 Expatriate experience analysis

Following the argument of the use of qualitative as opposed to quantitative

analysis in the literature as explained in Osland (1995), there are several

authors which use quantitative analysis in order to explain the way in which

expatriate experience their stay in a host country, for example Tung (1987)

analysed the expatriate experience and way of life by analysing 144 senior

managers in multinationals and he came to the conclusion that the expatriates

spend the first period being worried about the family situation and the

problems that might arise form an experience in a new country, and the last

few months thinking about the future career that he or she will expect to have

once the assignment is over. This short explanation shows exactly what

Osland (1995) was talking about, it has no direct insight in the why the

expatriates experience those worries, and produces a restrictive analysis

which does not give an insight in the experiences of the expatriates.

Furthermore the research was carried out on senior managers only

emphasizing the complete lack of research on the area of middle

management which until now in the literature review has not appeared once.

Other authors like De Cieri (1991) have expressed a factor that influences

greatly the expatriate experience and success, she described the expatriate

process being on that is not suitable for everyone, through his research, she

found that expatriates with appropriate family support, self esteem and social

support were more successful and had a better experience; this was done

trough qualitative analysis in order to determine the factors that influenced

this positive outcome; but once again not on middle management. Another

14

researcher that studied the effects of expatriate experience was Welch

(2003), he analysed the further problems faced by the expatriate which are

not normally present in the host country and found that there is a much higher

influence by the employer on the expatriate due to the fact that when abroad

his or her decisions influence the way in which the expatriate lives with his or

her family and unfamiliar demands; which make the expatriate experience

stand out from a normal change of job. Osland (1995) describes the

expatriate experience as an adventure which starts as lonely and difficult and

carries on in ambiguity, mystery, language adaptation and cultural adaptation.

From this last set of problems, two main problems spark that are a result for

expatriate experience, one is the inability to adjust tackled by authors like

Sparrow (2003) and Osland (2000), and branch out to the spouse and

children problems Selmer (1998)due to adaptation which are main factors

influencing the expatriate experience in a host country.

The author will now get into more detail passing from how the data was

analysed to the data its self and the findings in the literature connected to

expatriate experience; the starting point will be the U curve (Lysgaard 1955)

as it is one of the main methods of analysis of the expatriate experience

according to the literature.

2.3 Stages of adaptation in expatriate assignment

The U curve (Lysgaard 1955) is a commonly used method to analyse the

experience of expatriates, it covers several stages of their psychological

endeavours, although it has limitations due to the fact that many expatriates

don’t go through some of the stages for example the sojourner by Richards

(1996) or the stages combine with each other in some cases making a

combination of learning and adaptation or even culture shock and learning

15

like in Richards (1996), Osland (2000). The U curve describes the different

stages the expatriate goes through from the day he or she arrives to the day

he or she leaves, this U curve can be a very useful tool when analysing the

stories told by the expatriate middle managers as it points out the main

factors that influence their experiences and gives us a sort of psychological

analysis of the subject dividing the superfluous information from the extremely

important one (Lysgaard 1955).

2.3.1 The ‘Expatriate U Curve’

According to a popular theory first presented by (Lysgaard 1955) the stages

of adaptation and experience for an expatriate, can be represented and

analysed by a set U curve, through which the expatriate goes through from

beginning to end of his transfer in a host country. Many authors utilise the U-

curve as means to measure the expatriate experience, as Black and

Mendenhall (1991) supports, this curve shows the different common stages

through which the expatriate goes through, from the start of his appointment

as manager abroad. There are several stages in this U curve, and depending

on several factors; these stages can last longer or shorter periods of time.

These stages were written by Oberg as honeymoon, crisis, recovery and

adjustment (Oberg 1960), and further on integrated in (Lysgaard 1955) U-

curve.

2.3.2. the stages of the curve

Honeymoon: This is when everything is new and exciting and the

psychological mood of the expatriate is at its best trying new things, seeing a

different environment, it’s a mix of euphoria, novelty, fascination and

comparison with own culture (Lysgaard 1955).This initial stage seems very

simplistic and doesn’t give an option of having an initial negative impact nor a

16

different reaction which may vary depending on the subject; the initial

questions for the candidates later on in this paper will be based on this

concept and the author will test the theory on the field in order to confirm or

dismiss this period of high happiness and fascination when the expatriate

arrives in a new land. The assumption taken that the expatriates go through a

honeymoon period in which as described by Lysgaard (1955) they find

everything new and exciting in their work abroad, at the beginning might be

according to the author a direct result of the way in which companies choose

the people that have to be sent abroad; according to Webb and Wright (1996)

the companies have to chose in advance the candidates who have the best

qualities in character which makes them perfect for a job abroad. Furthermore

the training in culture or language may be insufficient and the expatriates may

feel unable from the beginning to continue the job; therefore there are doubts

on the consistency of the honeymoon period. Culture shock: Right after the

honeymoon stage, which doesn’t normally last very long, a prolonged period

of culture shock starts. In many cases, the period where most expatriates fail

their intended assignment by either going into paranoia or discovering that

they lack the skills to survive this stage and decide to return in safer grounds

back home due to inability to adapt (Richards 1996). This involves the

manager noticing many cultural differences or simply work place behavioural

differences and comparing them up to a paranoid level, hostility arising

between managers, employees and host country business as well, this leads

to hostility and negative criticism, which have a huge negative impact in the

relation between manager and employees. This, as stated in Cornway and

Briner (2005) can be resolved by close collaboration with the company,

supporting the psychological contract (which includes beliefs perceptions and

obligations; which are not in a form of written contract but in a sort of mutual

understanding between employee and employer), the training and just by

17

listening and taking into consideration the expatriates concerns, without

ignoring them as not important. These views are all positivist in approach, not

something that is appropriate to an experience related research due to their

generalising approach; on the other hand such view expressed in both

Cornway and Briner (2005), Cullinane et al., (2006) set up a question which

may be interesting in a constructivist approach, is this an appropriate

solution? Have the middle managers in expatriate assignments experienced

such approach and has it been successful, or are they feeling a need for it at

all? This will be another topic which will be approached in a qualitative way in

chapter four. Learning: If the culture shock phase is overcome, the next slow

upwards step is the learning process, which will create a manager able to

intake cultural changes and adaptations easily. In a way the stranger as

interpreted by Richards (1996) will reach the point where he has ceased to be

an external observer and will get involved in the dealings of the natives

becoming more than just an outsider and will start interacting in the

appropriate way learning the way to get in the inner circle and getting

accepted. As a result of this drastic change, all the negative attributes that

hindered the manager previously will disappear or will be noted more easily

by the manager and will be set aside. The main concept which seems obvious

and according to the author while reading trough Osland (2000), Richards

(1996) actually considered as one of the main factors, is the language, which

enables the better understanding of the culture and builds up confidence. This

is then followed by a logical increase in network as socialising and better

understanding of the culture, which finally results in a good level of comfort on

the manager’s side (Cummins 1996).

Adjustment: if all the previous stages have been passed, the next one is a

simple consequence of adaptation to the environment using the acquired

18

skills and knowledge to perfect the understanding and productivity of the

manager, although this part seems overly optimistic and utopian according to

the author, the skills and communication abilities acquired might distance the

expatriate from the home country company and even tempt him or her in

remaining in the host country at this point leaving the home country company

(Staff Journalists, Singapore 2009). The manager’s work becomes more

stable, he or she accepts the culture, adapts to the differences and becomes

more involved and enjoys his or her work just like in the honeymoon phase,

only this time there will be no downwards curve, as he or she has a strong

base on which to build the approach with the working environment (Lysgaard

1955), this is a double bladed issue which leads to many expatriate middle

managers not adapting anymore to the home country once they are back as

chapter 4 will explain. The U-curve put a large emphasis on the expatriate’s

problems which manifested in the culture shock section, this was quite

simplistic and many factors influenced the problems faced by the manager in

this situation according to many authors, and this is what the next section is

going to analyse.

2.4 The problems faced by the expatriate manager and the family

2.4.1 adjustment problems

A large number of authors (Sparrow 2003, Coyle-Shapiro et al., 2000,

Richards 1996 and Osland 2000) have tackled the inability to adjust of the

expatriate, and they closely connected this factor with the psychological

contract which is the informal contract established between the employer and

employee on mutual respect and fairness (Rousseau 1996). According to

(Coyle-Shapiro et al 2000)there is a trend now-days that companies have

ignored the expatriates concerns and this put the expatriate into a lonely

isolated position, where they have no support and by themselves are unable

19

to adjust to the new environment, this problem could be easily be tackled by

the company by giving training, moral and participatory support, maybe

through better contracts which include such practices, this would diminish the

risk of failure and on the long run it would result in a profit for the company its

self. Further research has been done on the inability to adjust of the

expatriate, this research shed light on other factors that influence the way in

which the expatriate does or doesn’t adjust. This research considered the

expatriate as a stranger in a new land, and connected all the different

inadaptability problems of the expatriates to the one of a stranger (Richards

1996). One large problem of the stranger is that he has a tendency to become

paranoid and anxious towards everyone surrounding him or her in the new

working place when his or her training and the culture shock phase start;

disabling any possibility of further integration or coherent reasoning (Lysgaard

1955).This problem may be due to other reasons which may depend on the

character of the person him or herself or cultural myths brought by the

expatriate from his home country as the findings in chapter 4 suggest.

One of the main warnings of (Richards 1996) from the beginning was that

expatriates who were forced to go abroad were the more vulnerable to this

kind of psychological problem; therefore suggesting that expatriates to be

effective should be excited of having to go abroad. There are several

symptoms that result from a severe culture shock; these can be obsession

with the level of cleanness of the food and water, great frustration over minor

problems like lateness, movements, reactions, the idea that people hate or

take advantage of the expatriate and finally complete rejection of learning and

associating with the new environment (Brislin et al. 1976). All of these factors

influence the performance of the expatriate to the point that he or she is

unable to reason or produce coherent thoughts and may fall into a state of

20

abnormality, completely removing the chances to succeed in an alien

environment. According to Richards (1996), the research now days done on

the adaptation of the expatriate to a new environment is not as reliable as it

should be. Instead of relying on actual expatriates in the alien environment

situation, the researchers tend to use research students as test subjects for

this problem. Once again the situation of middle management hasn’t been

analysed or divided between top and middle management again. There may

be differences in reactions due to different social background or different

training, that could be taken from middle management experience, but again

this aspect is overlooked in favour of a more general approach to the

analysis.

Going on further in the analysis of the stranger, if the psychological problems

are not considered for a moment, there are several actions that the stranger

has to take in account in order to be accepted in the alien society. The

stranger is an individual that tries to be permanently accepted in a society

completely different from his own. He has initially a superficial understanding

of the culture, things taken from studying books, listening to other people’s

experiences, all things that give an outside view of how the alien culture is but

don’t give enough to integrate a person in the environment. The best

approach that the stranger can have according to Richards (1996) is to have

no actual assumptions of the culture and have a neutral observant approach,

at the beginning, so that he or she can integrate all the cultural differences,

without the problem of rejection. The main problem according to Schutz in

Richards (1996) is that the stranger is doubtful of the loyalty of the people in

the host country and he is objective he sees things but doesn’t really

understand them in the same mindset as the natives do and therefore this

makes him even more sceptical of the customs and the way people interact in

21

the alien land (Richards 1996). One of the problems with the stranger is that

he or she is narrow minded, lacking the skills and social knowledge that

enables the expatriate to interact and needs to develop interact in a way that

he or she is allowed by the host culture to learn their customs, intake and

make his own the new culture; without, at the same time, losing his own

culture or rejecting either one. There is a risk that the expatriate might lose

interest in his own culture and refuse contacts or treat them as suspicious. On

the other side according to Richards (1996) locals might mistrust or be less

open seeing that the expatriate can understand them and their culture too

much, hiding certain insights that the expatriate might find advantageous; for

example Japanese employees and colleagues might find it suspicious almost

offensive if the expatriate had too much insight in their culture and might start

closing up and not sharing many things with him or her. The other extreme

could be a total rejection of belonging to any culture form the expatriate,

getting a feeling that he or she is too different to both the original place of

origin and the host country at the same time and this may end in a very hard

to resolve psychological black hole that renders the expatriate in adjustable

(Osland 2000). The research done, on the problems of adjustment in host

countries, has been fairly limited by the fact that most empirical data has

come from U.S. expatriates, this data put the main emphasis on the inability

of the expatriate to integrate in the host country culture, due to major

differences between the expatriate’s culture and the one of the host country.

This concept becomes more of a problem the more the culture is distant from

the one of the expatriate, until reaching the point that the expatriate is

completely unable to adjust, as he or she will be unable to know or be able to

identify the proper behaviour required in the host country (Suutari et al. 1997).

In other research by Richards (1996) there is a sort of expatriate who seems

to be the superhero of the expatriation community, this is a certain

22

psychological set of mind that is very rare and has outstanding results when

he is placed in an alien environment. The Sojourner, as described by the

journal article by Richards (1996), has the innate ability to enjoy unfamiliarity,

impossible situations and adventure without ever looking back or thinking

about their own isolation.

The fact that most of the research was done on U.S expatriates and as

previously stated on some research students and not actual working

expatriates, has been a quite clear indication that the area of expatriates has

been only barely analysed, especially in regards to direct expatriate

experiences, as only a real expatriate could share his or her personal

experiences in a host country. This problem enlarges in the area of middle

management, where it seems no research at all has been done, unless the

general allegations to expatriate managers were meant to include middle

management too. The author finds this very unlikely, as the collected data

seemed to come from positions of top management.

2.4.2. The spouse

The other large problem according to Selmer (1998) is the inability of the

spouse to adjust, this is a problem that all companies considering expatriation

should consider carefully. This problem can materialise in different ways, the

spouse might not like the culture of the new country or not be able to adapt to

it quickly, or she might not know the language and be unable to socialise

easily. Another problem could be that she or he has career expectations or a

job of his or her own (Selmer 1998).

An early study showed that most of the cultures in southern Europe have a

very close connection with family and the spouse, there is no decision taken

without the consent of the family, therefore if the expatriate goes abroad and

the spouse doesn’t like the environment or doesn’t adapt to the new area, the

23

expatriate starts having problems (Hofstede 1928). Due to the unreliable

nature of Hofstede’s research that was limited to IBM companies and not a

large variety of companies therefore, this may need to be verified trough the

findings and analysis of data in the next chapters. Most of the research done

asking the effects of family on expatriates experience abroad has identified

the importance of such area in the expatriate’s success as supported by

authors like Black and Gregersen (1991), Selmer (2001) and Selmer (2000).

The family has to be motivated to move abroad, they have to be taken great

care of and learn the language, integrate as much as the expatriate does in

the new country, and to a certain point, a happy family can create

opportunities of friendship with the locals, therefore according to many

expatriates having a harmonised family situation abroad is a great help its self

(Suutari et al. 1997).

There are other factors which are more internal to the expatriate, that is the

fear that the family might not be able to adjust to the new situation, this sense

of extreme responsibility that the expatriate might have not had back home

because then he had support by friends, the government, and the cultural

environment on the family its self and some of that burden was taken away

from him or her. Once placed abroad all the responsibility for success or

failure of every family member that followed the expatriate, ends on the

expatriate himself, making it a very stressful factor which needs to be dealt

with or the expatriate might end in a permanent state of anxiety and

uncertainty for the future of his or her family (Osland 2000).

The family aspect of the expatriate experience has been another under

researched, and at times not even considered as a problematic factor by

some companies according to certain scholars, the companies take a

systematic approach to the selection of the candidates, without considering

24

the complications of the family and what type of training needed by the family

its self (Scullion et al. 1999). According to Farquhar (2009) there are many

cases that the family experience is a complete integration with the host

country, and this on the other hand created temporary advantage for the

company but later on problems as all extremes do. For example, in Singapore

according to research by Farquhar (2009) there is a high level of expatriates

remaining and their children integrating and deciding to remain in the area;

this at the beginning affects the manager’s performance in a positive way and

the family harmony and peace enable him or her to concentrate more on the

job at hand. But as the time passes the expatriate has become so integrated

due to his or her family that any attempt to re impatriate the manager will be

met by resistance or even end up in the manager leaving the company for a

local job. As a result most companies don’t take preparatory steps and the

expatriates experience frustration and failure in the family situation, which

goes to add on to the extremely high failure rate of expatriates abroad, which

is quoted to be between 25-70% according to various researchers (Black et

al. 1991).

Following the family problems, the literature moved on to a more personal

characteristic of the expatriate which greatly influenced the expatriate

experience making it different depending on the country of origin, this was the

expatriate background culture.

2.5 Problems deriving from the background culture

2.5.1. Inability to cope with larger responsibilities

This is a problem that appears depending on the personal traits of the

manager and the culture he or she comes from at the same time. The main

factor that seems to appear in most literature is the fact that there are

25

managers with different emotional drives centred on individualism or

collectivism, masculine or feminine culture, high position or low positional

drivers all these terms will be explained further on in this section(Tan et al.

2005). Depending on the what drives the manager, he or she will have a

different approach or reaction to several situations and the factors previously

mentioned will impact on the manager’s ability to cope with responsibilities.

According to (Tan et al. 2005) there is no real need to change a person’s own

culture to be culturally accepted and effective with the people in the host

country, but just explain himself in his or her own cultural way, avoiding

gestures or words that in the host culture may result in embarrassment or

offence. Without losing the initial values and persona that the manager had

before he became an expatriate.

The cultures that seem to be mostly affected by problems, dealing with larger

responsibilities abroad according to many authors like (Tan et al. 2005, Glanz

2003 Kaye 1997), seem to be mainly based in Asia.

It is also due to the fact that the Chinese culture in particular has just recently

opened to the world as the market was only opened in the 18 th century, and

this caused a shock when the different western and eastern cultures found

themselves on the same ground, due to the collective nature of China and the

independent self centred culture of the west (Kaye 1997). The Japanese

approach to management creates a problem in dealing with large

responsibilities too, this is due to the fact that the briefing given to Japanese

managers is quite the opposite to the briefing given in western countries; they

are advised to keep a low profile not draw attention, not take any risk and

work in collaboration with everyone without competitiveness. These factors

downplay the role of a manager dealing with large responsibilities and can be

seen as a weak approach by a western society, in direct experience,

26

Japanese expatriates seemed to need a further explanation by the host

country managers to be able to understand why they were not being

successful, and in these cases it was found that the advice given in Japan on

how to behave was exactly the opposite of what it was required (Glanz 2003).

This example shows that current training in some areas is either given based

on cultural approaches which are not suitable for the host country or no

training is given at all to these individuals putting them in an extremely difficult

position when faced with larger responsibilities, this will be further analysed in

chapter 4 with the question on the training received by the middle managers

before taking the position abroad.

2.5.2 Expatriate experience, the cultural background influence

First of all, what are the problems which arise from expatriation for the

expatriate himself? How do these influence his or her experience? The theory

researched by the following Bartlett et al.(1998), Suutari et al. (1998), kaye

(1997) divides the expatriate failure reasons according to three main

geographical regions, which cover the entire globe as it extends onto the two

main continents excluding Africa where little research has been done and

may be an area of interest for future research: US multinationals, Chinese

firms and European firms. These areas relate to the research on experience

of expatriate managers due to the fact that each possesses completely

different cultures and the experience perceived by one area might be

completely different from the other, bringing the author the need to analyse

each area with particular interest (Critchley 2001).

The main recognised reasons for their failure are the manager’s inability to

adjust, the spouse inability to adjust, other family’s problems, manager’s

personal maturity or emotional stress and the inability to cope with larger

27

overseas responsibilities (Bartlett et al.1998). The studies on expatriate

experience in a host country which relate to the background culture seem to

centre more on the effect that the expatriation has on them when they move

to U.S. or China or simply round Europe and in turn all the expatriates in the

papers that deal with the subject either more or come from those countries, a

large bulk of the research resides in the Asian area compared to European or

North American expatriates these were studies made by Selmer (2000),

Selmer (2001), Selmer (2002) and Selmer (2004).

There seems to be a single author writing on the cultural background

influence on the expatriate experience, and Selmer (2000) seems to focus

only on a particular culture which is the Chinese as main area of research.

This seems to be very hard to find direct expatriate experience data, by this

the author intends data that includes detailed qualitative stories and

interviews which give an overall idea of the experience. Most of the data

seems to be quantitative based on a yes or no basis. According to Kaye

(1997) Chinese managers overseas, have difficulties adapting to the new

environments, coping with larger responsibilities, have as above personal and

emotional problems, then there are cases of technical inability and the most

common the inability of spouse to adjust (Kaye 1997).

All these difficulties come from the different levels of job satisfaction that the

expatriate has and the levels of non job related satisfaction; the lower each

one of these is the lower is the performance of the subject; but this is from a

quantitative point, there may be different results in a qualitative analysis was

to be done. This information has been mainly accumulated using

questionnaires and not direct interviews and various observations, the author

still finds it quite restrictive as it doesn’t give a detailed direct experience

explained by the expatriate himself (Palthe 2008). The research was done in

28

order to understand if training in this kind of cultural area was useful in order

to decrease the time or level of culture shock (Lysgaard 1955), in a specific

cultural area like China (Kaye 1997). The research was although done in a

quantitative way and the author struggles to see how this can aid the research

on culture shock if the reasons for the decrease in culture shock were not

analysed in a qualitative method. This gives evidence of a very vague and

detached quantitative research on the experience area in general which may

result in generalisation on the topic, or erroneous assumptions due to the

restrictive nature of the research (Glanz 2003). These have the particularity of

having one recurrent reason: the inability of the spouse to adjust, this has

been generally stated in many articles the author has reviewed for example

Selmer (1998), Osland (2000), Scullion et al. (1999), but there was no real

concrete evidence that this was the only problem influencing the experience

of the expatriate. However for example, research by Selmer (1998) done on

expatriate experience and the factors influencing their job performance, has

emphasized the importance of the family and spouse adaptation as one of the

major factors, together with social adjustment and cultural adjustment. There

is no central emphasis that the spouse adaptation is the only crucial element

in European nationals adaptation, all the other factors present in all the other

cultures are also present. Therefore, it seems that more research is needed to

come to the commonly known conclusion that the spouse is one of the main

problems for European expatriate managers (Suutari et al. 1998). All of these

problems are correlated with the manager’s continental culture, which

influences greatly his or her needs, to the point that expatriation becomes

impossible and qualitative data may enable us to understand what exactly

those points of influence are as opposed to a quantitative research that may

just give us the generalised picture (Hanson, 2008). As it can be seen from

the list of nations, there are four main topics to be tackled in order to avoid

29

expatriation failure, which branch out in several more complicated and various

topics which need to be analysed in detail trough qualitative analysis, these

are: inability to adjust, family, inability to cope with larger responsibilities,

technical inability and in all instances the spouse adaptation is a major

problem.

All of the previous analysis was done on top management experience in a

host country depending on where the manager came from, either from

Europe, U.S. or China, each one of the areas according to the research

carried out, had a particular problem during his or her experience as an

expatriate; the author of this dissertation will analyse the experience as an

expatriates of Italian middle managers as there seems to be no research

done on this particular geographical area on top of the lack of research on

middle management experience. The author found it appropriate to include a

small section on women in expatriate assignment as there is much literature

on the topic despite the evident small numbers, it is a topic that should not be

ignored as in some companies it might with time become a larger issue.

2.6 Summary and observations

The literature analysed in this chapter has analysed various areas which are

all useful for the analysis of the middle management expatriate experience:

The U-curve by (Lysgaard 1955), gives an outline of the things that need to

be analysed chronologically in questioning the candidates; giving us a focus

on the various psychological aspects of their experience.

There was a predominant use of quantitative analysis trough a positivistic

point of view in the review like for example the analysis done by Tung (1987),

a method that pushes towards generalisation although it has a proportionate

representation and doesn’t give a reason for the choices and experiences of

30

the analysed managers; this creates a need for more qualitative analysis and

a more constructivist approach to the topic as authors like Osland (1995)

support. The various areas of problems, like the cultural differences between

continents following (Bartlett et al.1998, Suutari et al. 1998, kaye 1997), give

an idea of what to look into what problems and what cultural psychological

aspects will have a key influence on the experience. The inability to adapt

section will give the reader and the author areas to look out for when reading

the analysis as it covers all the problems that an expatriate may face once he

or she arrives in a new country (Sparrow 2003, Coyle-Shapiro, J. et al., 2000,

Richards 1996 and Osland 2000), and this will guide the questioning of the

candidates in order to see if there is a difference in the experience of middle

management compared to the top management. The difference in sexes is an

aspect that is still quite vague to the author due to the absence of clear cut to

the experience descriptions in the given articles (Hartl 2004). It seems that

most of the research done on expatriate experience has been external

observation form a third party without asking questions personally or receiving

answers in a way that could have explained the feelings, the real experiences

of the managers living abroad. All the research was a quantitative set of

questions with yes or no answers that couldn’t go deeply in analysing the

problem. Furthermore the methods of analysis of the expatriate experience

like the U curve (Lysgaard 1955), give an assumption that all those stages

occur and that every expatriate has the same type of experience regardless of

the country where he or she is stationed or their cultural background.

The spouse which seems to be a very highly influencing factor on the

expatriate experience was only analysed as a problem and again from

external observations, without analysing how the family adapted or

experienced the new country and what effect this had on the expatriate

31

manager; and furthermore the situation of children and their cultural change

and influence on the expatriate manager was not touched at all. The inability

to cope with larger responsibility was only analysed under an Asian context,

without looking at other cultures in more detail, for example a very high

percentage of the research done was either of expatriates emigrating in Asia

or Asians trying to integrate with Western systems, there are many other

cultures to analyse which have large differences with the typical Anglo-Saxon

managerial community but none of them were mentioned. Surprisingly, the

only research which seemed to look at the area of experience in a qualitative

way was the one done on expatriate academics, as it analysed the

experience and the reactions of the expatriates at such experience without

drifting towards generalisation or problem centred accounts. Lastly, as the

author expected, there was no analysis of the middle management expatriate

experience at all. All articles mixed the middle and top management

experience or the middle management was not even considered, an approach

that the author finds generalises the role of the managers and doesn’t

consider the differences in career advancement, the different trainings, the

difference in social status and even culture in some cases. Also the

motivations to become an expatriate may be completely different form the

ones of a top manager. On the light of such findings, the author intends to

analyse in further detail the difference in expatriate experience that the middle

management has, compared to the top management, a study that seems to

be completely absent in the literature that analyses expatriate experience.

32

Chapter 3

Methodology

3.1 Introduction to the methodology

This chapter aims to create a research methodology to investigate the middle

managers experience as expatriates, focusing on an Italian petrol company

and its middle managers sent abroad. The methodology starts by presenting

different types of research methods and some philosophical issues

characterising them, the purpose of such presentation is to identify and

describe and justify the approach taken for this research. The following

section will analyse the information sought and the research objectives that

characterise the structuring of the questions used in the interviews. After this,

the author will focus on the individuals chosen, the primary research and

questions chosen, in order to give the reader a detailed account of the several

choices made in order to collect the most appropriate data. Subsequently, a

list of the questions used in the interviews, with further explanation of why

they were structured in such way, will be given. Right after this last part,

access, ethics and reliability will be tackled in order to ensure the quality of

the research its self and give an overview of the problems that characterised

this research. And lastly a conclusion section will summarise and clarify all the

important key points of the methodology.

3.2 Research approach

Positivism and constructivism are the paradigms discussed in this first part

headed philosophy adapted, followed by the style that the author used for his

analysis and findings presentation, which is storytelling and narrative styles.

33

Following this, a set of different research methods of data collection has been

developed to address the research questions as stated in the following

sections.

3.2.1 Philosophy adapted

The philosophy used by most writers which have been analysed by the author

in the literary review is one of positivism. It is a philosophy that searches the

truth of how things really are, a general view of the behaviour of the targeted

subjects, companies or countries.

The positivistic approach is fundamentally based on quantitative data,

questions of why how and for what reason behind the results are rarely

tackled as such philosophy doesn’t cover such area (Cohen, Maldonado

2007). It is argued that the positivistic approach has a limitation that gives a

general view of the facts but lacks the outlining reasons of why a certain event

happened, why the results are those found. The quantitative data is a set of

numbers taken with the help of direct questions, which lack the background

information to the why and how of such answers (Hanson, 2008). The

philosophy that the author intends to use in his work is one of constructivism.

This philosophy is based on the assumption that individuals create new

knowledge trough their experiences adding to the one which already exists

regardless of the framework or previous knowledge that they possess (Kim,

2005). This particular philosophy is appropriate to the author’s research due

to the fact that he has interviewed managers who had various previous

experiences but through their experiences abroad created new knowledge

which they used to succeed in their assignments. This is a philosophy that

goes hand in hand with the qualitative analysis, therefore requiring all the

particularities that quantitative analysis lacks, like for instance the why, how

parts of the analysis which the author considers important for the complete

34

analysis of a middle management expatriate experience analysis (Hanson,

2008). The overall idea of this research is to give the reader a detailed

recount of what happened to the participants how they felt, how they reacted

why they chose to take certain decisions; and as a result to identify in each

instance the key moments of experience that can be key to understand how

the middle management adapts to an expatriate environment and what the

problems are. All these will be only possible to acquire by using qualitative

analysis and constructivist approach which is according to philosophical

theory the best for an analysis on direct experiences (Matthews, 2004).

3.3 Data collection

The author intends to research the recollections and descriptions of

experiences where, why and how the candidate felt or reacted that way in that

particular moment. The author as therefore performed a one to one interview

with each of the 10 candidates asking a set of questions which enabled the

candidates to give a log explanation of their experience as middle

management expatriates. All the interviews were done in a face to face

situation with open ended questions . This will be in order to not only obtain

the statement from the selected people, but also in order to get a sincere on

the spot reaction to the questions, taking in account body language and

expressions (Denzin, et al. 2005). This way of interviewing enables the author

to have a direct and more open answer than if on the phone or trough writing,

it is always better to be able to see a person in order to obtain more genuine

answers (Kannonier-Finster, 1998). The questions have been aimed at

obtaining a set range of answers which are in line with the objectives stated in

the methodology, the author wanted to be able to capture as much

information as possible giving enough space for the candidate to talk freely

and express his or her feeling on the subject and his or her experiences,

35

either by telling stories or by simply having an open conversation spawned

from the set questions.

3.3.1 Obtaining participants collaboration

Due to the author’s previous dealings in the Italian petroleum business, there

has not been any need for official request from the university or the author

himself, this is also possible due to the nature of the research which doesn’t

require details on the company its self risking industrial spying suspects, the

entire research and interviews were based on the personal experiences of the

managers completely disconnected from the details of company running. The

author had direct access to all the required resources and the personnel, this

was done throughout the first week of July when all the middle managers

working abroad will be going back to Italy in order to have their holiday break,

these were 10 middle management male managers (due to the lack of female

expatriate middle managers, which may be an area of further research in the

future). All the managers ranged from different backgrounds in terms of

education and experiences, but all of Italian nationality due to the base of

origin of the company. This provided the reader with a wide range of

backgrounds and furthermore an analysis of the Italian middle management

cultural adjustment into other countries which has not been observed in many

cases before and may spark interesting results. The author did not have much

time to look for a substantial amount of candidates to interview, the initial idea

was a sample of 15 middle managers but due to the short time given, the

period of the year when all the middle managers were going on their annual

leave and availability problems of the possible candidates; the author had to

decrease this number to 10. On the other hand, the data collected was

surprisingly rich and the result was that the findings and analysis were very

comprehensive on the subject in question.

36

3.3.2 Research objectives

The research objectives will be the answers of the following four questions,

which will enable the reader to have a full view of the middle manager

experiences as an expatriate compared to the normal recount of top

management experiences abroad:

To critically review the literature on middle management expatriate

experiences.

To explore the experiences of expatriates working on middle

management positions.

To explore the implications for organisations that send their middle

level managers on expatriate assignments.

The research objectives will be answered trough the analysis of the findings

which the author obtained through a set of semi structured interviews as the

following section aims to explain.

3.3.4 Individuals chosen for sampling

The sampling of individuals has been carried out based on an Italian

petroleum business with international branches which range from African

countries throughout Asia, South America, and many other areas of the globe.

Having access to such a broadly expanded company had enabled the author

to obtain samples of individuals who have been on assignments abroad or are

still working there at the moment. The company employs a large number of

middle management individuals who are sent abroad for various reasons and

with a great variety of backgrounds. This had positive implications towards the

research as it gave a true variety of data without restricting it to a single type

of manager with a standard background or psychological status and

education. The individuals chosen to carry out this research are 10 middle

37

managers who have just come back from their assignments abroad, or are

still abroad and have come back for their annual holidays.

The reason to have such an apparent small sampling is because it is thought

that research is not sampling research” (Stake 1995). The author doesn’t

want to give a proportionate representation of numerical yes or no data, the

content is the most important thing to analyse in this research. Therefore

instead of having a simple yes or no questionnaire given to a large number of

people, the author used a few candidates and obtain detailed stories of their

personal experiences abroad as middle manager in a narrative style

(Peltonen 1998). Some of the candidates are people very well known by the

author and they will be completely open and relaxed talking with him, they

might suggest topics and problems themselves as they are middle

management but also have been in many countries and in many positions.

They are all either on assignment abroad at the moment or just retired from it,

with a significant intercultural adaptation background and a tendency to speak

freely about anything in the company. The author has also spent a long time

at the work place with some of the expatriates while in Africa, Venezuela and

Germany and saw how they adapted to the culture and surroundings while on

expatriate assignment, therefore having a tactical advantage in the analysis of

their experiences. The author believed that with a good familiarity with this

people much better information could have been obtained, the positions that

they hold now days have gone up to top management for some, but they all

have been or still are middle managers and have experience of being one.

The author was aware of the double edge of interviewing people well known,

as the familiarity might have lead to misleading results or bias; therefore half

of the people being interviewed were completely unconnected and unknown

to the author until the time of the interview; this enabled the research to be

38

covering both types of candidates avoiding bias results (Lindlof, Taylor 2002).

The age range of the candidates varies between 30 to 60 years, as the case

study company has a strict policy of management being at least 30 years old

and the pension age in Italy is between 60-65 depending on type of work and

time spent studying before work.

There were no female managers in the company in line with the studies done

by Hartl (2004), the reasons of such lack of female presence has been

analysed in the literature review and this is the proof that such situation is still

present at the moment in multinationals. Due to this fact the author was

unable to find female middle managers to interview. The length of service

abroad is from the minimum of 3 years contract to 20 years in the same

position abroad. The locations where the interviewed managers have worked

varies from Africa, Europe, South America and Asia, therefore covering a

large geographical area giving a very inclusive overview.

3.3.5 Questions

Before even starting the questions, the author had a short conversation with

each candidate explaining the purpose of the research without being too

specific in order to get genuine responses. A conversation on the time spent

abroad, and general questions on current problems or things happening to the

candidate was the next step, all with the aim of putting him at ease and have

a fluent and relaxed conversation once the questions start.

The questions have been quite problematic to create as the author wanted to

have the feeling of the experiences projected to the reader, most of the

previous research regardless being applied to other types of managers or

other genders didn’t give a feeling that it was a real experience being told, it

was more a stream of disconnected stories which answered the objectives set

39

by the author but didn’t give a direct connected story that flowed uninterrupted

(Osland 2000) and in other cases it was a chronicle of an outside observer

(Black et al. 1991). In other cases it was merely empirical data which gave a

detailed amount of yes or no answers which seemed quite limited and no

actual reason for the answers unless extrapolated by the authors of the

articles (Palthe 2008).The author aimed to use the previously outlined

questions to obtain an answer to all the objectives set in this research and at

the same time project the feelings and experiences through which the

managers have gone; to the reader him or herself, as direct as possible so

that it could be easily understood by the reader. Furthermore by having

interviews the author believed that there may have been an opportunity of

genuine reaction or drifting into areas and problems that might not have been

even considered, as a result some of the open ended questions sparked

interesting discussions. The time to ask questions and have responses was

between one hour to an hour and a half, this is due to the fact that the author

intended to have a few candidates more candidates but was unable to obtain

as many as he originally intended therefore he aimed to have a very high

level of qualitative data to analyse from each; therefore the key words were

quality not quantity in this research.

3.4 Interviews

The questions asked in the interviews were all based on several aspects and

objectives as explained below. There were four main objectives in the

research that the author was carrying out, each of these objectives through

analysis of both the philosophy of constructivism and qualitative data

gathering, created several questions specifically aimed at answering

collectively one of the four main questions. The structure was as follows:

40

Icebreaker questions, these have been used in many combinations

depending on the subject and how familiar the author was with the manager;

the use of these were both to answer the background information and training

that the manager received before his assignment; partially answering one of

the objective questions. Research open ended questions, the author hasn’t

been very specific in some of the questions regarding the position of middle

management, this is because there was a need to see if there was a different

reaction and answer compared to the one given in the literature by top

managers. These questions were all based on the need for the objective

questions to be fully answered through a combination of the answers

received. The candidates were assured that all the information will be used

just for research purposes and not to measure their job performance in any

way, so that he answers can be as sincere as possible. All the information

was gathered in Italian as the author is native in the language, it was then

transcribed and analysed in order to obtain a clear sample of middle

management experience as expatriates.

3.5 Findings structure and data analysis

The findings structure has been done trough the method of thematic coding,

the data will be divided in several sections which match with each other

depending on topic, type of response, issue raised and frequently recurring

words which may summarise the area which the candidates were talking

about. Subsequently the data will be organised in a down scaling sequence;

starting from the overall main topic, going on to the important issues in the

topic and finally the causes of those issues; giving the reader a detailed and

comprehensive analysis of the topic and allowing the author to explore every

aspect of the interviews in the detailed level needed in order to conduct

qualitative analysis. The data analysis following the findings is structured

41

following the dissertation main objectives, explaining through the findings the

areas of interest, the conflicts or confirmations of previously analysed data by

other authors (Saunders 2007). The author in this chapter, analysed the parts

of data that can give an answer to the dissertation question, and connected it

to previous research in order to compare and contrast the differences or

similarities in the data gathered.

3.6 Access, ethics and reliability

3.6.1 Ethics

There are several problems connected with qualitative analysis when ethics

are concerned. The first is anxiety and distress, the person interviewed might

feel uncomfortable with some of the questions asked during the interview; this

may cause moments of anxiety or situations when he is not inclined in

replying, but as he is being interviewed he will feel the need to reply despite

his emotional situation. Another issue is the misinterpretation of the data

provided, the author may interpret through the theoretical spectrum some

issues raised by the interviewed candidate in a way which is not in conformity

to what the candidate meant. Furthermore this may lead to generalisation and

creating flawed data due to misinterpretation. The third main problem in

ethical issues when talking about qualitative analysis is the possibility to

reveal to others the identity of the candidate breaching his right to anonymity;

which in some cases may cause him some harm in the working environment.

The last major problem is the fact that the author is related to an important

gatekeeper in the company and such knowledge by the candidates may have

influenced the way they acted or replied to certain questions (Birch et al.

2002). The access to the interviews and the data has been obtained through

official channels, including the access to the building in which the interviews

42

were carried out has been authorised by the company its self providing a

visitor pass to the author and by signing the official visiting and purpose

papers provided.

3.6.2 Reliability and generalisation

There have been two main problems which the author needed to tackle on the

reliability and generalisation of the research. The first problem has been that

the author himself has been in the position of expatriate, although just as an

expatriate son living with his expatriate family. This pushed the author to

interpret the experiences of other expatriates in the way he interpreted his

own experiences, which may have resulted in the experiences being distorted

or stylised by the author old memories. Another problem resulting from the

author’s previous experiences has been the fact that he could have taken for

granted certain knowledge of expatriate experience while the reader as a non

expatriate might not know about those details and result in general confusion

in some instances. These two problems were mainly resolved by keeping the

personal experience as an expatriate out of the mind of the author simply

interviewing as if everything was new and never experienced before, only

concentrating on the answering of the research objectives without risking a

recollection of previous experience. The second problem was the

generalisation and personal grievances that some of the candidates

expressed while being interviewed. When doing background research on the

candidates in order to make certain that they were reliable for his research,

the author has questioned the personnel manager of the company and found

two main problems. The first was that some of the expatriates felt they were

not ready to leave their place abroad and blamed the company for their

problems once they got back to the central office, this resulted in some going

into depression and bitterness in the way they saw things. This was solved by

43

carefully looking out for superfluous comments that had nothing to do with the

experience but only with personal critical views disconnected from the

experiences themselves. The third has been the style of speech of some of

the candidates which talked as if everyone abroad does what they have done

or the natives behave all in a certain way in selected countries.

This can be avoided by eliminating the general terms in the interviews and

substituting them with phrases that stress the personal view of the

interviewed. Other general problems that occurred were the ones due to the

size of the samples used to write the findings and the analysis of this

dissertation; the initial suggested number was 15 but it had to decrease to 10

as due to the time provided and the fact that many managers were starting

their annual holidays in July, the author had to decrease to 10 candidates.

This problem was tackled by making more open ended questions aiming to

acquire the longest and most detailed interviews possible; which resulted in a

very thorough amount of data which was so substantial that the author had to

set on a side some for further research on the topic. The other general

problem was the difficulty that spawned form the qualitative method analysis,

the author had to limit the information acquired as it was composed by very

long recollections which at times included superfluous data or data that was

not connected to any of the objectives. Such problem resulted in time being

lost in both transcribing and selecting the right information with the risk of

drifting in areas not needed for this research.

3.7 Limitations

The research was quite limited by the amount of space provided, the author

managed to acquire a substantial amount of information from the interviews.

The information gathered from the interviews was so substantial, despite

44

being from just 10 candidates instead of 15 as initially planned. Some of the

interviewed managers gave many details and long explanations as the

interviews were up to an hour and a half long, but in order to include all those

lengthy explanations the author would have needed a much larger page limit.

This resulted in some information being deducted from the dissertation, and if

the page limit and research was to be done in larger scale and limit, much

more interesting information may be analysed and utilised in this area of

research. Another substantial limitation was the time allowed to finish the

research, all the interviews were organised in the period of middle to end July,

when all the middle managers were going on their annual leave. This limited

greatly the amount of interviewees available, something that may hinder the

results and limit greatly the comparison between top and middle management

as there are many situations documented on top management but very few

on middle management.

There was a limit on the capital available for research and travelling to the

facilities to meet the middle managers was costly and as privately funded the

project remained very small despite having the potential to be a substantial

project. Lastly, the research was based on just one multinational company

based in Italy, and if more time and more resources were to be available it

would have been a positive step to include other companies and other

nationalities in the research, in order to have a more well round proportionate

representation.

3.8 Summary

The research has been characterised by a constructivist approach in order to

examine in detail the experience of the middle managers, as this approach is

very well indicated through research to the application on qualitative analysis.

45

The analysis has been done mainly on primary sources, therefore interviews

with managers; due to the fact that in the literature there was no mentioning of

middle manager expatriate experience and therefore had to be taken from the

field. The findings and analysis have been presented in a storytelling and

narrative approach mixture in order to obtain a direct recount of the

experiences form the managers themselves and a direct analysis through the

narrative of the author. The questions are very open ended, unstructured as

explained above, in order to obtain the best direct and sincere reactions and

responses from the managers; this has been coupled by the fact that they

were face to face in order to describe the full extent of the reaction of the

candidates to the questions. The objectives of such research have been to

answer the three questions mentioned in the objectives section of the

methodology, to the fullest extent possible. All the generalisation, ethical and

reliability problems will be dealt with accordingly as mentioned in this

methodology section, ensuring the quality and high standards required for

such research.

46

Chapter 4

Findings

4.1 Introduction to findings

The following findings will be presented in the following structure: from the

starting problem which is connected to the difference of experience of the

middle manager compared to the top management expatriates, to the main

problem areas that characterise this difference and ending in the problems

that create this problem areas for middle manager expatriates. All the

managers interviewed for the purpose of anonymity have been given pseudo

names and will be called as listed in the appendix section 2. The author

identified three main peculiarities in the way middle managers experience

their expatriate assignment as compared to previous research done on the

experience area.

The first main peculiarity is the fact that according to the majority of the

interviewed middle managers, there is no training or support prior and during

their stay abroad, this creates problems with the language learning, the family

adaptation and communication, the cultural barriers and the danger

assessment of the middle manager expatriates.

The second main difference is the fact that most of the interviewed middle

managers were sent on the field in dangerous zones as opposed to top

management that was placed in a central office in the foreign country doing

office work and dealing with middle managers and workers from the office

mainly; this resulted in the middle managers having to travel in person to

47

dangerous zones with no organised aid from the company at times and with

no protection and far from any area where they could ask for help.

The third and final difference was the middle man position, the middle

managers as opposed to the top managers, have the problem of dealing with

both the top and the workers and having to support and satisfy both which

causes several ethics problems and at the same time when sent on expatriate

assignments the middle managers have greater responsibility but at times no

flexibility in the way they have to deal with the problems that arise, the top

management gives a task and the middle has to act upon it without any space

for argument.

The next section as previously explained in the introductory part of this

chapter, will analyse one of the three main persistent problems encountered

during the interviews, the lack of training.

4.2 Support and training of middle managers

During the interviews, the author came across a constantly recurring problem

that every middle manager interviewed talked about, this was the complete

lack of training prior and during the expatriate assignment. One of the

questions asked by the author was if the middle manager had received any

training before going on his assignment abroad; out of ten middle managers,

ten replied no training at all.

No, I didn’t receive any training before going there, I didn’t even speak

the language, and I had to learn it through my own means very

quickly.... (Ron, Personnel manager).

Another expatriate was just told the place where he was going to be

transferred and the technical problem he was supposed to deal with, any

48

other information was not mentioned, for example political situation, or cultural

training needed or any dangers the middle manager might have encountered.

All I was asked was if I wanted to go in Africa to deal with a the

software problem... The one of the millennium bug you know, and I

thought it would have been a new exciting experience so I jumped in

(Jack, I.T. manager).

Both these statements emphasize a perception of lack of training and

isolation from the central office and the company as a whole, with no support

given, making the middle manager experience problems in a harsher

environment as a whole. Some of the middle managers as mentioned above

had problems with dealing with the local language, the training wasn’t

provided by the company and they had to learn it through their own means

without any support; and at times it ended in embarrassing situations or

misunderstandings that cost the expatriate middle manager time and effort.

There was another instance, this was in Algeria, where I kept on

asking for a sample of a particular product to my subordinate and it

took me a while to get him to bring it to me... I kept on asking it in the

same way, ‘Champion’ every time I was looked at strangely and he

never brought me the sample....

Then I realised; in Italian sample is campione, but in French the right

word is echantillon, and I had sent this poor fellow on weird errands for

quite some time.... (Jim, Commercial manager).

There were other instances where the expatriate was sent in a new country

with no language training and a basic knowledge of the language, the

problem was that he had to learn it through his own means and in a very short

49

period of time as he was dealing with technical issues that needed a particular

terminology which is not taught at basic level.

The first time I went abroad it was in Algeria my second language was

English not French although I had very little basics from high school;

therefore the first fifteen days were a bit of a headache for me; just a

mix of incoherent sounds.... My job didn’t just consist in doing a job but

also teaching it therefore with no knowledge of the language it was

quite hard and excruciating to do for the first three months.... (Ron.

Personnel manager).

According to some of the middle managers that later on became top

managers stated that top managers received language training or already

possessed the appropriate language knowledge to start the assignments;

while the middle managers did not possess or receive any language

knowledge this may be an interesting area of study as this comparison does

not appear to be frequent in academic research. The language didn’t only

cause problems in the job area, but also in particular occasions it created

embarrassing body language misinterpretations which if dealt in the

inappropriate way it might have created very problematic situations for the

middle manager expatriate.

In Italy we have the expression... [The manager lifted his arm in an L

shape crossing with the other arm as he explained it is a common

expression in Italian culture]... It is a curse, a swear in Italian, and you

normally react by hitting the guy or shouting at him here... But in Arab

countries it means hello! How was your day!... Now just imagine what

a misunderstanding might have caused if dealt with by a more direct

Italian (Jimmy, Project coordinator).

50

The body language problem was one of the common cultural problems faced

by managers which did not differ from the experience of top managers in the

literature as it was a process of cultural integration. The author noticed

another area of difficulty that was common between many of the interviewed

middle managers, this was the family related problems. There was a general

feeling that the family of the middle manager was not considered by the

company in question, in some cases it was impossible for the expatriate to

communicate with his family at normal day times or spend some time on the

phone on days when the family was free because the country where the

expatriate had been sent didn’t consider such day a non working day.

For example in Arab countries Sunday is our Friday, this seems at first

a very small change, but on the long run you feel tired, you know that

when your family is free and you can call them can share some free

time with them over the phone, you actually can’t because it is not

Sunday here, it’s just another working day and you have no time...

(Ron, Personnel manager).

In 4 out of the 5 cases in which the expatriate managers talked about their

family situation while on expatriate assignment the middle managers were

sarcastic in a nervous way, they joke about their family problems which ended

in a divorce for all 4. The level of attachment to the topic that they had was so

intense that they kept on talking about it after the interview asking the author

to place a section in his paper dedicated to expatriate divorces due to the

company.

The best memory I recall from my assignment? ..... (Laugh).... My

divorce, I was with my partner before I was sent on assignment

abroad, she seemed like a great person when we were together; then

51

as I spent time away she changed and I was so happy when I got rid

of her... ask my friend next door, he was an expatriate too, same

ending, it’s the expatriate curse..... (Alfred, Payroll manager).

In the case of the middle manager it seems like the family situation is not

even considered by the company in question, not only the family is not trained

or supported, but it is not considered as if the expatriate should have to deal

with the problems deriving from it himself; and this as the interviews

suggested end in a divorce for the middle manger. The area of divorces

resulting from the expatriation of middle management is an under researched

area which may be worth exploring in further studies on the topic. In some

cases there was a tendency to endanger without warning or choice the

children of the expatriates. Some of the interviewed managers moved their

children at a very young age to a new and dangerous location with no

information on how they were going to deal with their needs or how they were

going to protect them from harm.

I moved in Zambia with my two months old twins, they were crying for

the whole trip there and I had to pack 2 trunks 55 Kg heavy each,

paying something like two million Liras at that time Italy still had Liras;

of excess luggage.... then when I arrived there I realised they didn’t

sell any nappies for children so I had to ask every person that came to

visit me from Italy to bring a pack of those.... (Robert, Personnel

director).

This last statement supports the complete lack of support given to the

expatriate middle managers as opposed to the top managers normally

analysed, this may be a particular case associated to the subject company or

may be a middle management case. It is not possible to verify it as the

52

research is carried on only one company. In other cases there was a lack of

food and water and the manager had brought his family with him, and he had

to go through a distressing experience to provide for them without any support

or warning that it could have happened by the company.

It was quite a while ago, but I still remember in some places where

there was lack of food especially fruit, and water and you had to deal

with it yourself the company didn’t deal with this it was always your

problem.... In Iraq I had to ask the Turkish black market to import a kg

of apples for my family paying them 600 thousand Liras in order to get

them... Or I had to go and look for water with any mean possible while

there, as it was always needed (Jack, I.T. manager).

This lack of support depicts an area of negligence in the company attention

and care for the expatriate middle manager and his family. This is a social

contract negligence, which generally in relations to expatriates in a company,

its manifested by respect and mutual understanding. Following the social

contract problems, the third consistent problem occurring is the lack of

training and support from the company compared to the support given to the

top management as the majority of the managers interviewed stated. In some

cases the cultural barriers in terms of etiquette behaviour and religious beliefs

and rules that hindered or endangered the workforce. In these cases, there

was a risk of offending the locals because the expatriate didn’t have a training

in how to react in an appropriate way that could have befriended the locals.

There were several differences in our cultures, for example when an

Arab allows you to see his daughter it is a great honour, you should

show very deep respect for a person that allows you to see her in

Saudi Arabia, or, when an Indian belches at the table it’s not actually

53

rude, he is saying that he appreciates the food you have served him

and he expects you to do the same if you liked his food... or if your

wife shows her legs in an African country its very provocative for me

more than showing her breasts... we had no training in this and many

times I personally messed up out of ignorance and trust me it was very

embarrassing and out of place.... (Ron, Personnel manager).

This is an area of common difficulty for both middle and top management

which the author didn’t find differences in and this is due to the nature of the

problem its self, cultural details so particular may only be an individual

experience form manger to manager. These difficulties resulted in the

following further problems related to the lack of knowledge of problems

particular to the host country or culture. There were other cases where the

expatriate middle manager had to deal with problems inexistent in his home

country due to different religious beliefs and also due to different climate, he

had no training nor warning by the company; there was no guide provided to

deal with these cultural issues.

There was a particular situation where I had to push my bravery very

far, it was in Saudi Arabia, during a Carem period, during this

particular period the people in that area could not eat nor drink during

the day time.

The problem was that we were working on some structures up on

extremely high poles with a temperature that touched 50 degrees and

in a desert area therefore you can imagine the extreme heat that the

workers had to endure… I tried to convince the workers to drink and

eat because they would have possibly died by fainting and falling from

that height without any food and water, but they wouldn’t listen it was

54

such a deep religious belief that it was not possible to change their

mind... (Ron, Personnel manager).

The middle manager has the same task as the top of integrating and adapting

to the host culture, although the means and support to do so is diminished or

not provided by the company in question. Lastly on the topic of support and

training, there was a lack of knowledge needed for danger assessment, the

middle manager expatriates were sent with their own means and no training

or warning to countries where the slightest mistake would have cost them

their lives. One problem was the assessment of the character of the

expatriate middle manager by the company before they sent him to the

expatriate assignment. In some cases a very calm and relaxed person can do

a job where a very proud and driven person might fail ending in dire

consequences due to the cultural expectations and costumes of the host

country as one of the interviewed managers explained giving a real life

example as follows.

He (His collegue) passed by customs had a ticket to go back to Italy,

the customs guy told him to open the bag, he did it then the customs

guy rummaged took everything out and dirtied everything; then with a

disgusted face he pointed at the guy to close the bag and go... The

guy started complaining for the treatment, the customs guy simply

pointed at him and two guards took him away in a van, he never took

that plane... You either need a guide to tell you what to do or you are

born to do it I have seen people with no training like me getting out of

that situation just out of common sense. (Alfred, Payroll manager).

The manager already had to be aware of the dangers, a preparation that is

normally given by the company to top managers according to the interviewed

55

middle managers but not considered crucial for middle managers by the

company in question. The middle manager in this case knew what to do due

to previous experience in the field which he had done by himself, but he

specified that initially he didn’t have the training, and if he had not had the

common sense as he stated, he would have been in the same situation as

that person he described. In other cases always due to the lack of preparation

according to the manager, the expatriate was unaware of the situation of the

country and continued to behave in the same way as he behaved in his home

country, resulting in a high risk for himself as the following statement explains.

The first thing that I noticed when I went out that night and decided to

head back as a consequence was, that the level of danger was

enormous compared to Europe, you could not walk round at night and

I was always used to do that in Rome, which made me homesick very

soon (Sonny, Personnel manager).

There were some situations resulting from this lack of preparation as

previously explained, where the expatriate witnessed and experienced

shocking episodes unexpectedly and he looked very shocked even after

years talking about it, something that the training provided to top management

according to him spared the top managers.

Then depending on the country and the situation there are very heavy

problems that linger in your mind all the time; like when I was in Iraq if

I made a phone call, I could hear the Iroquoian controller clicking in

the background to listen in to my every conversation.

56

Another time I woke up went in my garden and saw a guy in uniform

running through it and then another one in the same uniform just ran

by and shot trying to shoot him in my garden...

One of my co-workers had a gun pointed at his head for a lift in his

car, I saw a person being axed to death... those were pictures you

never forget... (Robert, Personnel director).

The difference with the top management according to the interviewed

managers who later on moved to top management positions is the protection

and danger assessment situation. Whereas a top manager is in the office

dealing with managerial problems and delegating tasks, the middle manager

has to go on the field, unprotected as he is not provided by the company of

appropriate protection.

4.3 Top in the office middle on the field

In many of the interviews carried out, the expatriate middle managers had

very direct experiences on the field, they never talked of working in the office

and delegating or doing any desk job unless it was in a placement in Europe.

The difference in assignment was also emphasized by the comparisons done

by the middle managers who later on got promoted to top management; they

explained that the job as middle manager was much more isolated and on the

field while the one that they did later on in life as top managers was much

more office based. Most of the expatriate middle managers recollected many

memories and experiences of facts happening on the field, in deserts, in the

refinery core stations or on the areas where new bulks of refineries were

being built, when they talked about African countries especially there was

never mentioning of being in an office; which compared to the experience that

they recollected later on as top managers was exactly the opposite.

57

As top managers most of the work was done in the office and the rest

delegated to middle managers to deal with on the field. Furthermore there

was no substantial aid given to them by the central office or the top

management when they were sent on assignments on the field, most of them

described the trips and experiences like an isolated individual having to deal

with all the problems with his own means or perish trying because there was

at times no possibility of communicating with the company. On the other

hand, if sent in an expatriate assignment in Europe the work was very similar

to the one done in the central office, this data does not coincide with some of

the main theories that don’t divide the middle from the top management

experiences due to most of them being based in the European continent and

Asia. The main point expressed by the interviewed managers is that

according to them Europe is not an expatriate assignment but just a change

of office in a similar area.

Europe was quite normal almost boring as I could not see any

difference and it didn’t feel like going abroad, a bit more like changing

region in your own country... (Sonny, Personnel manager).

This short statement differs from some of the main papers on expatriate

management experiences possibly due to a different country of origin being

analysed (Italy) or peculiarities in the company being analysed. This phrase

from one of the interviewed middle managers summarised the views of many

of the other managers interviewed; none of them considered Europe as an

actual expatriate assignment. The picture changed drastically when they

talked about an African assignment. When the expatriates talked about Africa

they recollected an adventure, something completely different from the normal

office job that they recollected in Europe.

58

The place where there was an actual huge difference was Africa,

when I arrived I felt I was in a different world, a different environment

all together. I felt the difference immediately, I had to get used to being

one of the few white people, I was easily spotted and all the attention

was focused on me wherever I went, there was no way of being

anonymous... (Jack, I.T. Manager).

The difference between middle and top management was easily spotted in

the African continent, the expatriate middle managers were sent on the field

to deal with many problems on their own.

After the problems we had with the plane, we ended up in the wrong

town, and somehow we managed to communicate with the person we

had to meet, after a few hours of travelling by car we reached the

destination... a guy came in the bar shouting riots! Riots! We were

literally picked up by this guy put in the car and ran while people Sunni

and Shiites were killing each other on the street... there was no way

we could get help there we were on our own helped by random local

people fortunately... (Robert, Personnel director).

The inability of communicating and receiving help from the central office and

the fact that the middle managers had to resolve matters with their own

means, shows a gap between the help and dedication of the company

towards the top management compared to the middle management. When

talking about Africa the expatriate was in a dangerous position, there were

actual physical problems and it was not something that could be fixed by

improving the psychological adaptation of the expatriate. That was the

experience of a middle manager dealing with company relations with clients,

59

they had to go on the field and risk their lives with no means of

communication, the recollections presented by middle managers when they

reached top management positions were very different.

I was in the office while at work, I had many problems with the locals

especially at the beginning when they thought that with riots they could

take over and obtain higher salaries... and because I was young they

didn’t respect me, but I was trained for these things and I dint even

have to move from the office to get them to understand that it wasn’t

going to work... (Sam, Managing director).

There were situations where the middle managers had problems finding food

and water, they were sent on the field to direct constructions of service depots

with no warning by the company of the food supply being low and the water

not being readily available or even clean.

I was sent to deal with the construction of service depots, practically in

the middle of the desert... I arrived there after a long trip and the guy

accompanying me said we might have not found lunch today as the

food had already been eaten. We arrived there he talked to a guy that

after an hour or so managed to get us something that looked like a

piece of meat.. he picked some forks from other people he said they

didn’t need them anymore, and then gave us water from a jar which

was full of flies that a guy kept on throwing out with a spoon... (Luther,

Personnel manager).

In this case if the manager was not careful and considerate about what he ate

or drank he would have been in high risk of contracting a disease; there was

no means of getting food from a reliable source either therefore it was not a

60

paranoia situation it was real. This was an experience that had a large

difference from the recollections of the top managers in the cafeteria provided

in the host country, in Africa it was still poor food but compared to the middle

managers on the field it was clean and readily provided.

Another problem faced by the middle managers compared to the top

managers was the knowledge of hygienic rules, including diseases, hospitals

and cleaning habits. The top management generally brought their own

medicines, they had a private doctor to deal with their problems and didn’t

have to go to the local hospitals or deal with diseases without medicines as

the middle managers were barely informed of any medicine needed.

A middle manager was forced to go to the hospital for treatment and many

times the situation worsened.

He (the middle manager colleague) was sent to the hospital when he

got hurt one time, I didn’t manage to stop them from taking him to the

hospital as they said they could cure him and practically dragged him

there... he stayed on that bed maybe 10 minutes... there is a fly in

Africa that lays eggs in things you put out to dry and if you don’t iron

them you get the maggots under your skin and they eat you alive... he

got so many of them in those 10 minutes it took him weeks to kill them

from his back... (Ron, Personnel manager).

There were also treatments that were provided by the doctors in Europe that

the private doctors and people with experience in Africa knew had negative

effects, but the middle managers did not have any aid provided by either

private doctors or anyone knowing this problems, as they were just sent

abroad with the details of the technical things to fix; and they were expected

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to start immediately on the project management on the field without any time

for adaptation.

I was given Lariam tablets before going to Africa and I kept on taking

them as the doc said I needed them to avoid getting malaria... I was

never visited by a doctor there was no regular check up unless you

paid for it but I felt fine and I carried on working on the project... after a

few weeks I felt my liver being really painful and swollen... I paid a

private doctor out of my own pockets and he told me to immediately

stop taking those tablets as they kill your liver, he said better getting

malaria than using those... (Arthur, Project coordinator).

This may be a good area for further research as there is no substantial data in

the literature about the difference in medical treatment between middle and

top management. There is little research done on medical assistance in

expatriate assignments despite the problems present in the findings which

clearly depict an area that needs further research to aid the expatriates, in

particular the middle managers.

4.4 Middle man is not the same as top man

Many of the interviewed middle managers expressed moments of frustration

with their communication and negotiation between the top management and

the employees under them. The main problems consisted of the direct orders

from the top management which in most cases were not negotiable and the

need for the employees to survive in low pay and low employment

environment. This problem was further on increased by the occasional

situation where the expatriate middle manager has never directed a large

amount of employees before the expatriate assignment and therefore does

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not possess the skills or the familiarity to deal with large numbers in an

unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar problems. The following quote pictures

the typical concern of a middle manager sent abroad with no experience on

large projects and in several countries dealing with a large number of

employees.

My first contact with a foreign country was in 1998 I was a analytic

accountant for the company before I was catapulted in a completely

different environment in 1998. I was then assigned to a completely

different role when I was sent abroad as the project leader of an IT

software implementation and update in Africa. As all the systems in

Africa were really old the company decided to change all of them

instead of attempting to update them and were all based in Kenya,

Tanzania, Ivory coast, Nigeria and later on we would have had to

import them in South Africa. With the number of employees and such

a large area to deal with I was quite confused, I was there just given a

task and no further instructions on how and I had to fulfil it with my

own means... (Jack, I.T. manager).

There is no real insight in the experience of expatriate middle managers and

their problems with coping with larger responsibilities nor on top management;

most of the research done was on the way they reacted culturally and how

they dealt with the larger problems. Most of the data was quantitative and

didn’t give a direct recollection of facts. For example in Tan et al. (2005)

analysed the factors of masculinity and femininity behaviour influencing the

expatriate decision making and the influence that he or she has on the

employees and furthermore analysed the fact that managers don’t need to

change their own culture to be accepted and followed by a larger amount of

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employees but interact with them explaining themselves in their own cultural

way avoiding gestures or phrases that might offend the employees. There

was a mixed response to the impact of increased numbers of employees and

larger responsibilities, the company didn’t use any criteria that divided the

selection for middle managers to send abroad on skill and experience basis.

Some like the manager in the following quote, were trained to deal with large

numbers and already in middle management roles in the home country while

some others as previously quoted had no previous experience.

Before going abroad I was responsible of dealing with the

maintenance of the fuel depots in Italy.. I was already coordinating

maintenance personnel after six months that I had been recruited by

the company, I therefore already had a middle managerial start in my

home country... (Ron, Personnel manager).

The second main problem that was repeatedly present in the interviews was

the ethic question, this consisted of orders being given to the middle manager

by the top manager which influenced in a negative way the relations with the

employees or had an unethical nature due to the top manager possessing a

large amount of independence from the central office and therefore taking

advantage of it.

There were some in the company with zero ethics, they had such a

way with people... there was a lot of corruption and very little

sensitivity, keeping a clean record was so difficult as some looked for

personal advantages some just wanted to get you something to do so

that you were out of the way it was so difficult to deal with... (Alfred,

Payroll manager).

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This problem worked also in the opposite way, the situation on ethics was

influenced by the employees that due to low payment rates, political situations

in the country and unfair treatment from the top management policies or

simply the government policies, didn’t have any privacy, trade union

protection, job security and in some cases no food. There were some

instances where the host country government as partially owner of the

company influenced the way the manager had to deal with employees and

with the management its self to a point that the manager had no control over

the company and had to submit to the government’s will regardless of

company or ethical losses.

With Chavez there were so many problems in Venezuela, as soon as

someone was suspected of being against the regime he was

immediately fired by the company and we could not do anything

against it as they commanded there, as they had 51% share of the

company under government control... we had to both deal with new

recruits and accept what the government gave us regardless of skills...

(Sam, Managing director).

This particular area of government interference on ethics and business

running in a negative way, seems to be rarely analysed and would be an

interesting area for further research as it opens up new and unexplored

problems for the expatriate managers.

The following is data not previously analysed in other journals or academic

papers and therefore a very unexplored area of both top and middle

management; as they are both affected although it seems middle

65

management due to the fact that it lacks power and authority does not have

the same protection as top management has.

This situation created a problem for the middle manager as they had to deal

with unqualified employees as the top management under the government

rules employed them only due to political faction; and at the same time the

middle management had to dismiss qualified workers due to suspicions from

the government side. The problem persisted with the relations with the top

management if it was a government and multinational joint company; as the

privacy of the middle managers was constantly breached and every decision

was judged according to phone tapping and co-worker spying.

Then depending on the country and the situation there are very heavy

problems that linger in your mind all the time... Like when I was in Iraq

if I made a phone call, I could hear the Iroquoian controller clicking in

the background to listen in to my every conversation... (Ron,

Personnel manager).

There were situations where due to the poor quality of life and low pay

permitted by the government or the company its self and therefore the top

management, where employees resulted in stealing form the company.

This put the middle manager in the difficult situation of accusing and removing

individuals from the company due to stealing despite their skills and their

precarious nature. This was a decision reserved to the middle manager which

gave them a choice of disregarding directives from the top management and

the government to fire the employee in order to keep a good relationship with

the employees or fire the employee caught stealing and adhere to

governmental and company regulations.

66

After some time I noticed there were a few problems that were

becoming uncontrollable, there was a tendency to give loans at an

uncontrolled rate which was making the company lose quite a lot; and

employees being caught stealing... this was due to the constant need

of people for more money for food and kids etc.. As I was middle

manager I had the difficult task of making the top management happy

by not spending too much on workers and at the same time helping

these people to survive... (Alfred, Payroll manager).

This ethical dilemma is one peculiar to the middle management position as a

top manager in an expatriate position as explained by the manager in this

case, would have delegated the task of dealing with the employee to the

middle manager.

4.5 Summary

In conclusion there were several peculiarities that made the middle manager

stand out in his expatriate assignment, one was the lack of training received

from the company in question, the other was the lack of set criteria for

choosing the expatriates to send abroad. There were cases of expatriates not

being trained or able to deal with large numbers of employees, cases of

expatriates not knowing the language, being unable to behave in a way

acceptable by the host country culture with dire consequences to the

expatriate himself. Then there were problems with the support given to middle

managers expatriates in order to perform their task, they were often left

isolated with no food or water; and in dangerous countries with no aid from

the company even in cases of airplane tickets or security assessment in an

area. The problems persisted with the hygienic conditions and the preparation

in order to avoid contracting diseases or parasites. The last set of problems

67

peculiar to the middle management position in an expatriate assignment was

the ethical dilemma of following the top management directives regardless of

ethics due to being too far from the core company, the problem of keeping

morale up and keeping employees from starving without using extra capital

not allowed by the company its self. And finally the problems with dealing with

governments that disregarded ethics and were partially owners of the

company or disregarded capital gains or even the security of the workplace in

defence of government party support as in the example in Venezuela.

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Chapter 5

Discussion

5.1 Introduction to the discussion

The analysis chapter will focus on the issues raised by the findings of this

dissertation, all will be presented in two sub sections explaining the main

issues that emerged from the findings and the implications of such issues to

the body of research on expatriate experience. Furthermore the analysis will

compare and contrast the findings with the literature presented by previous

authors on the topic of expatriate experience, pointing out areas unexplored

before and areas where the findings may differ from the main body of

literature and reasons why. The sub sections will follow the main objectives of

the dissertation, one will be on the description of experiences of middle

management expatriates and the other will focus on the peculiarities of the

experiences in middle management expatriation.

5.2 Middle management expatriate experiences

The main characteristics of middle management expatriate experiences were

many times comparable to the ones described by the body of literature on

expatriate experience. There were many instances in the findings where the

middle managers encountered problems and difficulties, which according to

the middle managers, were made even harder to overcome due to the lack of

company support as compared to the top management. The data extracted

from the findings enabled the author to isolate some core topics extracted

from the more general topics in the findings these were: abandonment and

isolation, being an expendable resource, being the lone middle man, lack of

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expertise and training, endangerment and cultural awareness. All the stated

new areas were part of the findings general topics and present all the time,

making them the main factors to be analysed and discussed in order to gain a

deeper knowledge of the expatriate experience. The following section will

focus on these themes as reported by the middle managers.

5.2.1 Abandonment and isolation

In many instances there were descriptions by the middle managers of

situations where they had to get through the difficulties presented in front of

them with their own means, for example the manager describing the problems

in getting on the plane and the riots in areas completely isolated from the

central company, both through the comments of the expatriate middle

manager and the evidence of abandonment by the company, the overall

experience description was one of abandonment and self preservation on the

expatriates side. The middle management recalled experiences in many

cases in the findings were in line with the research done by Coyle-Shapiro et

al. (2000), who in their research they emphasized the custom of companies

now-days to send expatriates (top managers or middle managers, the point

was not clear in the research, but might be a common problem with both

types of managers) into lonely and isolated positions with no training nor

support by the central office. Richards (1996) observed that, the expatriate

manager left in an alien environment has to adapt and integrate on his own

means, with no mention of a higher authority supporting his endeavours. The

support that this point has towards the author’s initial query about the

difference between top and middle management experience is unclear, as

both Coyle-Shapiro et al. (2000) and Richards (1996) seem to have analysed

an area of management which did not coincide with the one researched by

the author. This might have been due to different geographical area, different

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companies analysed or maybe different ranks of management. Both authors

specify that in some cases the isolation feeling and the lack of support is

present, they do not say what are the characteristics of the managers

experiencing these difficulties. The interviews give a feeling of abandonment

by the company. In such situation the expatriate doesn’t feel like a needed or

appreciated part of the company but just an expendable asset.

5.2.2 Being an expendable resource

There were many instances when talking with the middle managers, where

the feeling of just being an expendable resource to which the company would

have never invested any extra capital to support. This was a development of

the feeling of abandonment, many of the managers as a result of being left to

deal with problems without company support came to the conclusion that they

were just an expendable resource and lost their trust and at times respect for

the company its self. One of the evident areas was the family support which to

the middle managers was a very important point to be supported in as the

psychological wellbeing and the reason for having taken the expatriate job

was the family for many of the middle managers. According to Osland (2000)

the family situation is a very stressful factor on the expatriate psyche, it

influences the concentration that the expatriate has on the job he is

performing for the company abroad. Scullion et al. (1999) suggested that

companies now-days do not consider the family as a factor to add in to the

training that is given to the expatriate and the situation due to family problems

is undermined or overlooked. The findings in this dissertation suggest that the

family situation was rarely considered by the company in question, there was

no consideration for the wellbeing of the children of the expatriate as some

middle managers explained, they were asked to go to a new country with very

young children without having an idea of dangers and problems they were

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going to face once in the host country. One middle manager gave the

example of the impossibility to find nappies for his daughters, this created a

situation which at the beginning could have been avoided just by informing

the manager in advance. In the area of top management the middle

managers explained that basic support was given to help with the family

situation, but in their cases the company only asked them to move in the host

country regardless of family needs or situation. There were instances where

the middle manager interviewed talked sarcastically about his family situation,

blaming the company inadequate training and support for their divorce with

the previous partner; and some became very emotional about it stating that

they were just expendable resources. The further factor that the author

noticed about the divorced middle manager expatriates was that once back in

their home country they seemed unhappy with their work and generally

negative about everything, giving a feeling of wanting to go back to the host

country. This may have been a random reaction or a particular behaviour of

those interviewed middle managers or it may have been directly connected

with the loss of family life suffered due to the company inadequate family

support methods. This point is not clear as the research has been done on a

small sample and only one company but it may be an interesting area for

further research. Farquar (2009) did an extensive study on families of

expatriates remaining in the host country even after the assignment was

finished for the manager but it seems there was no mention of divorces

problems, this may due to the different company he was analysing or different

type of managers. In most research done by Black and Gregersen (1991),

Selmer (2001) and Suutari et al. (1997) there is evidence of harmonised

family situations, support, being taken care by the company and even

language support for the family. In all the interviews that the middle managers

stated there was no support present for the family by the company in any

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tangible way therefore outlining another difference between top management

and middle management in the analysed company. Top management

analysis by the previous authors like Black and Gregersen (1991), Selmer

(2001) and Suutari et al. (1997) showed evidence of support in successful

expatriate experiences. The lack of support for the middle manager’s

expatriate family raises the question, is the middle manager just an

expendable resource and therefore no investment on his wellbeing just a

waste of resources for the company? The abandonment and treatment which

lead the middle managers to think that they were an expendable resources

had a substantial effect on their effectiveness on how they performed on the

job, the lack of support resulted in the managers having training and

preparation problems which resulted in a lack of expertise and training.

5.2.3 Being the lone middle man

Another theme was the managers having difficulties pulling their authority

both with top managers and with employees at the bottom creating a situation

of being the middle man that cannot do much. There was a tendency on the

middle manager finding himself in frustrating situations where the employees

were unsatisfied and the top managers were not listening to the concerns of

the middle management, this seemed to be against the principles of the social

contract ideal situation. The social contract ideal situation would be treating

the expatriate as an important asset giving his life importance as Rousseau

(1996) explained in the context of psychological contract. In the case of the

middle manager expatriate, the situation worsened according to middle

managers due to the distance from the main office which allowed some top

managers to disregard ethical rules which resulted in the employees suffering

as a consequence. There was an ethics problem present also in Sims (2003),

the problem that the middle manager is not listened to and that the top

73

management issues orders without asking for a second opinion or ignoring

one if suggested by the middle manager. Although there is no mentioning of

ethical issues concerning this top bottom relationship in the managing area.

Depending on the area where the middle managers were sent, the top

management was not the only ethics infringing party in the company, but

there were instances where the government of the host country disregarded

ethics and forced middle managers to employ and fire employees depending

on political inclinations or leaders changes of mind, which were explained by

one of the managers in the Venezuelan example. This issue of ethical

misbehaviour and problems resulting in a high negative impact on the middle

manager expatriate experience which seems to be an under researched area

worth looking into in future. The main reason for this ethical issues being

under researched seems to be the lack of difference given to the expatriate

experiences either being in Europe or in a developing country according to

some of the interviewed managers. The feeling of abandonment as a

consequence made the middle managers ask themselves the question of

being an expendable resource for the company, this mainly due to the lack of

interest that the company had on their well being. These difficulties might

have sparked form the fact that the continental situation was different from the

European one as many middle managers interviewed explained.

Most of the papers written by Suutari et al. (1998), Suutari and Brewster

(2001) and Glanz (2003), considered experience in Europe an expatriate

experience just comparable to going to another continent as they described

problems typical to the U-curve by Lysgaard (1955). On the contrary, the

middle manager interviewed by the author did not manifest any of the

problems documented by the previously mentioned authors. This might be

because the experience in Africa impacted more as the culture difference was

74

greater than in Europe or due to their different country of origin as Suutari et

al. (1998), Suutari and Brewster (2001) and Glanz (2003) did not analyse

Italian management. There was nothing comparable to a usual every day

office life and some of the main theories by Suutari et al. (1998), Suutari and

Brewster (2001) and Glanz (2003), were applicable whereas in the work the

middle managers did in Europe there were rarely signs of adaptation

problems and none of the adaptation problems and experiences described by

the previous authors were mentioned. One of the peculiarities in the middle

management situation was that there was no visible help from the company,

they were left in a strange land just as explained by Richards (1996) to

integrate in the culture and deal with the problems themselves. These were

stories similar to the ones present in Osland (2000) with the hero’s tales, the

difference although is that he talked about people travelling very near in

Europe and the problems and experiences were associated with stress and

exaggerations or misunderstandings by the expatriate, whereas in the African

situation, these problems were not an exaggeration but a very common

everyday life routine. Furthermore in this different environment there was no

recollection of office work it was all on the field which reinforces the idea that

middle management has a different experience compared to the top

management documented by Suutari et al. (1998), Suutari and Brewster

(2001) and Glanz (2003), Palthe (2008) which concentrate on office work.

During many of the interviews many of the middle managers never talked

about any of the problems involving office work, it was all based in deserts, in

the refinery production structures or while working on machinery, which

supports the point that the job done by middle managers in this case was all

on the field. Top management don’t distinguish the intense expatriate

experience outside of Europe to the less impacting one in Europe due to the

nature of their work according to the interviewed middle managers that later

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on progressed to top management, this is because top management spends

much more time in the office performing tasks that can be easily transferred in

the European environment. In other words the experience perceived by the

middle managers in Africa was much more on the field, presented with

cultural difference in some cases very problematic, while whenever they

talked about the experience in Europe it was like a recollection of what they

would have done in the home country, no differences or cultural issues were

highlighted; as a matter of fact many of them did not refer to the re

impatriation as going back to Italy, but as to going back to Europe.

On the other hand, there were also some managers that connected their

problems and different experiences to the lack of expertise and training, this

was less connected to the difference in continental culture but more on the

language problems and general technical skills that they lacked.

5.2.4 Lack of expertise and training

There were many instances where the middle manager expatriates, due

according to them to the lack of interest and abandonment by the company,

where the middle manager expatriate lacked the appropriate training to

perform the given task. The expatriates were in many occasions blaming the

company for many of their short comings or problems encountered, most of

these were associated with training which they should have received before

going to the foreign country. Most of the problem was related to the language

training that the company didn’t provide to the middle manager as it

considered them an expendable resource which therefore was not worth

investing in order to provide skills to enhance performance. The area of

language training and understanding is not present in many papers published

by authors analysing the expatriate experience like Richards (1996), he was

76

never specific on language problems but generally on cultural understanding

and the need for integration, unless he underlined the language problems

under the mutual understanding discussion. Other authors like Glanz (2003)

and Selmer (2000) focus on social, emotional and responsibility problems but

nor specifically any problems related to the language learning or

understanding. The middle managers interviewed by the author have all

manifested a concern and difficulty in language learning and understanding,

this was not due to their ability to learn a language but due to the complete

lack of preparation supplied by the company according to them. There were

instances where the middle manager was sent to a new country for example

Algeria in one of the cases in the findings, where he did not know French and

he was there to do a very specific technical job which required extensive

knowledge of the local language. He had received no training nor help by the

company in language training and had to result in privately learning the new

language with his own means. The same expatriate, supported by the

statement of another expatriate who developed into a top manager later on,

stated that top managers received the needed language training and also had

personal tutors available before and after arriving in the new country. There

were also body language related problems, this was a point raised by

Richards (1996) with the manager having to understand and integrate in the

host culture through observation. Furthermore Kaye (1997) associated this

problem with the fact that expatriates need to adapt to new environments

when faced with a completely different culture and this can be a long and

difficult process depending on the expatriate nature and the support provided.

This last point suggests that in this case the middle managers who are not

chosen trough an appropriate criteria according to them and are not

supported or trained in the local language, both verbal and body language;

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are at a substantial disadvantage compared to top managers when

experiencing language and cultural adaptation in the new country.

5.3.5 Endangerment and cultural awareness

In the findings there were many examples of problems with cultural

adaptation, it seemed to be one of the main themes as every single one of the

interviewed middle managers started with the cultural adaptation problems

despite the questions raised. One was the hand gestures that in Italian meant

an insult and in Arabic meant farewell.

In other cases the appropriate behaviour to have even when being mistreated

by the customs authority, being spied upon on the phone or having a soldier

running through the manager’s garden shooting another person. All these

situations need a deep understanding of the local culture in order to avoid

ending in a dangerous situation according to many of the interviewed middle

managers. There was a feeling of fear and pity for other people that were not

so lucky to come back, when the managers talked about the cultural problems

that they had to go through. One of the managers was being kept under

surveillance on the phone constantly, that he explained was a standard

procedure in Iraq but the psychological fear and worry that if he said anything

they wouldn’t have liked they would have gone to take him from his house

was always there. There were other instances where the expatriate had to

witness people being axed to death, or tortured in front of him, or being

mistreated without him being allowed to do anything without ending in the

same situation, it was a process of understanding when not to react and when

to accept that it was a normal everyday thing in the host country.

The cultural understanding and integration is a concept analysed in Lysgaard

(1955) U-curve model, this behavioural differences are part of the culture

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shock part of the analysis in the U-curve. Authors like Richards (1996) have

explained similarly that during this part of the expatriate life, the manager has

a difficulty to understand and react in an appropriate way to such behaviour

and needs time to adapt and integrate the host culture in his own.

Furthermore Critchley (2001) expresses the need for the expatriate to analyse

each area with particular interest as all cultures present differences which

need to be absorbed and understood by the expatriate in order to do his job.

The cultural adaptation problem persisted in many of the interviews carried

out by the author supporting the fact that there was a general cultural

adaptation problem which was indifferent between top or middle management

affects all expatriates. Although, according to the middle managers

interviewed the top management had received more warnings and at times

teacher support for cultural understanding once they arrived in the host

country and the middle managers never received such help. In the context of

cultural integration the research done by Suutari et al. (1997) and Richards

(1996) give a similar view on the topic, a common ground between middle

management and top management.

Top and middle managers are strangers to the new culture as explained by

Richards (1996) and need to integrate and make the new culture their own

before they can adequately interact with the natives and perform their duties.

Once the manager has understood the culture he can bend the rules and

keep his own way of behaving while at the same time respect and follow the

cultural differences. The only main difference pointed out by some of the

interviewed managers was that the criteria for choosing middle managers

expatriates was not based on cultural adaptation, appropriate skills and

qualities to deal with another culture but it looked like a random process.

79

To support this is the example of the expatriate middle manager’s colleague

who got arrested at customs because of being culturally inappropriate for the

customs authority; and according to the middle manager, training which was

given to top managers or a more careful recruitment selection as it was

reserved to the top management would have avoided. From the detailed

descriptions by the interviewed middle manager, the author associated their

problems to culture shock as explained by Lysgaard (1955) where the

expatriate manager finds himself in an unfamiliar situation that threatens to

make him return home before finishing his assignment. In this case the

expatriate was comparable to the research done by Richards (1996) as he

experienced many of these traumatising situations but used them to develop

himself instead leaving to go back to his home country. Many times they are

unprepared as they have not reached the personal maturity to deal with such

problems as Barlett et al. (1998) supports.

The examples given by the interviewed middle managers highlight how such

lack of training can turn the middle manager expatriate experience in a failure

due to minimal cultural clashes. The problem of training then resulted in

another major disruption on the middle manager expatriate experience, this

was characterised by the verbal and body language difficulties. In the work

done by Barlett et al. (1998) it is mentioned that the manager’s maturity and

understanding is a main factor of success in an expatriate assignment,

according to the managers interviewed it seemed that when the company

chose middle managers, they didn’t consider factors like appropriate

maturity. Previous experience and skills in order to survive in environments

which are very hostile for the managers, and this didn’t give enough time to

analyse the situation and adapt to it like suggested by Critchley (2001).

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In some cases the managers have to adapt to an hostile environment without

having the awareness of the dangers present and in the particular cases of

the interviewed middle managers that had been in Africa, there were

instances where a very consistence in hygienic rules was needed in order to

survive in the environment.

The middle management experience differs from the theories by Lysgaard

(1955), and Richards (1996) on the culture shock and paranoia stages where

the manager has problems considering water clean, food adequate for

consumption. The reason for this difference may be due to the different area

of origin of the managers, the different type of manager or a different host

country as the ones analysed by the previous authors as there was a real

need for an almost paranoiac behaviour in order to avoid diseases and

dangers.

There were points similar to the paranoia situations presented by Lysgaard

(1955) and Richards (1996), but in this case cleaning obsessively and having

a high emphasis on hygienic rules was not a paranoiac display by the middle

manager but it was a needed ritual every day in order to avoid situation of

parasites and diseases.

5.4 Summary

There were several areas of interest in the findings that gave a feeling of the

experience of a middle manager as compared to a top manager normally

analysed. The first area was the one regarding the feeling of abandonment

and isolation, in many of the interviews the middle managers considered

themselves not being looked after by the company and having to rely on

themselves for the positive outcome of their assignment and at times for their

own survival. The other predominant feeling that the middle managers

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expatriates expressed was the feeling of being an expendable resource for

the company and the top management, this was directly connected with the

feeling of abandonment, they were not looked after by the company according

to them, and furthermore their wellbeing was not the top priority. The family

situation which was the main reason for some of them to accept the expatriate

assignment was not looked after, and at times it was even upset by the

company lack of family support abroad. The middle managers constantly

expressed the feeling that they were alone battling between top management

and employees in a situation where both top and bottom did not listen to the

middle management advice and influenced the way the middle management

could perform its tasks in a negative and unproductive way. In some of the

interviews there was also evidence of ethical breaches from both top and

bottom resulting in the middle manager being in a stressful and powerless

situation.

The lack of expertise and training impacted on the middle manager’s ability to

deal with several situations like cultural clashes, dealing with large numbers of

employees or even performing regular tasks that they were able to do in the

home country; for example training employees was greatly hindered by the

fact that some middle managers could not speak the local language. The last

part of culture clashing was the result of lack of training in cultural awareness,

which put the middle managers in a position of being open to dangers

resulting from misconceptions of the local culture or misbehaviour in the eyes

of the local culture. Furthermore there was no training nor looking after in the

area of hygiene and diseases that could be contracted in the host country

which could have resulted in the middle manager contracting some diseases

and being in a position of health danger.

Chapter 6

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Conclusion

6.1 Research Objectives

The research objectives stated in this dissertation were three: the first was a

critical review of the literature on middle management expatriate experience

which was quite under researched. The second question was on how the

middle management perceived his experience as an expatriate, which was

answered substantially by the findings as the following paragraphs will

explain. The other was the question of peculiarities that separated the middle

managers experiences from the top management.

6.1.1 Middle management expatriate experience

There were many areas of literature touched in the findings and the

discussion, Lysgaard (1955) U-curve problems especially relating to culture

shock were ever-present in the data, but differences were noted due to

different geographical areas researched and different cultures and cultural

reactions to the new country. Also instances which resembled Richards

(1996) were present, involving the manager having to integrate and adapt in

the new environment. But despite being at times similar to the research

already done on the topic, the middle management experience was different

especially in the area of trust and support by the company and the top

management, resembling the findings from Sims (2003) but in a different

wider context and a much more difficult environment. Throughout the

dissertation there were many areas of interest that expressed the difference

and peculiarity of the middle managers experience. The main findings showed

that the feelings that the middle managers had while on expatriate

assignment were the main factors of difference in the expatriate experience,

83

as they highlighted the problems and differences faced by each manager.

There were a set of evident areas from the findings, the first was the feeling of

abandonment and isolation, this may have been a peculiarity of the company

examined, but there was evidence from the explanations of the interviewed

middle managers that the managers had experienced long periods of

complete isolation both from the office and from the core company, and at

times even from their families. Some of the middle managers found

themselves isolated in areas where there were riots running for their lives, or

in deserts without an appropriate supply of food and water; each time having

to deal with the problems in complete isolation and no means to communicate

with the core company or even the offices situated in the host country. This

resulted in the middle managers having a feeling of being expendable assets

throughout their foreign assignment, the isolation feeling was according to

them due to the company not being willing to look after them, this problem

extended to family life.

Some middle managers had no means of communicating with their families

that they couldn’t take with them due to the danger of the working place.

Other middle managers had their families with them, but without any support

from the company ending in them having to find ways to support the family

with their own means like the example of the impossibility of finding nappies

for children in one country, or fruit for long periods of time and having to

spend large amounts of their salary for survival. As a result form being seen

as an expendable resource, the level of respect and interest in the middle

managers seemed to be very low at the working place, putting them in a very

difficult middle man position where in many cases they could not deal either

with the top management or the employees.

84

This was because the top management was far from the central office

according to them and there was no means for the company to keep them in

check. On the other side the employees were starving and needed support

and the middle manager could not provide that support due to the lack of

pressure that he had on top management, creating ethical issues that crippled

the employee/management relations. This situation was only particular of the

African experience that middle managers had, they seemed to consider an

expatriate situation only the one experienced in a developing country;

whereas when they talked about European assignments it was simply like

going to another office in their home country, there was no difference, it was

not considered and expatriate assignment. As a result the problems of lack of

expertise and training were only present when talking about developing

countries, as skills never needed in Europe were needed there.

There was a large emphasis on spoken and body language, many of the

middle managers were sent in areas where it was already very difficult to get

employees to focus due to religious, cultural and political harsh situations

which had higher emphasis in developing countries. This was increased by

the problem of not being able to communicate with the employees and made

the managers having a feeling of lacking the abilities to deal with the

employees themselves and sometimes resulted in spending the middle

manager’s own money to get the language training needed as the company

didn’t supply it. The last area that was constantly present in the middle

manager’s expatriate experience was a partial result of the lack of training,

there was no cultural awareness and as a result in developing countries this

may have resulted in the endangerment of the expatriate, some recollections

emphasized on the need to understand the culture in order to avoid offending

locals which in some occasions resulted in the incarceration of the expatriate.

85

Some other were emphasizing the need for the expatriate to have an almost

paranoiac care of hygiene and diseases due to the high risk of getting sick on

assignment.

Many of the mentioned issues in expatriate experience were particular to the

middle management analysis and were not present in previously analysed

research, this may due to the particular nature of the candidates and the

company which was Italian, and there has been little research done on Italian

companies, or the particular nature of the company its self, but due to the little

time available and only one company being analysed, the author admits

further study may be needed to verify these findings. As a conclusion, there

were many new areas of research that sparked form the analysis of middle

management experience abroad, the fact that the information was so rich and

full of details was due to the use of qualitative analysis which enable the

author to analyse the feelings and problems in much greater detail than it

would have been possible with quantitative due to its nature in having short

and precise answers all interpreted through statistical analysis.

The middle management experience had many new areas and differences

from the top management counterpart, one was the feeling of abandonment,

the isolation and self preservation and survival which was not present at this

level in other research. Another was the new topic of Europe not being an

expatriate assignment according to many expatriates, this may open many

more areas of research as the topic was just superficially analysed. The topic

of being the middle man between both the company the top management, the

government and the employees creates by its self a new research area which

promises to be very wide and rich in data.

86

As a follow up to the data collected in this dissertation, there is an opportunity

here to open new areas of research based on the developing countries

expatriate experience, the middle management different experiences and

hardships, the support given to middle managers on expatriate assignments,

in some cases even the selection criteria of middle managers based on skills

and ability was a very under researched area which may have many new

areas of research to explore.

The summary of the conclusion on this dissertation is that there is very little or

no research that focuses on middle management expatriate experience at the

moment, the middle management experiences are unique and have many

new areas of research which have not been looked at before. And there is a

substantial difference between middle and top management experience in

expatriate assignments. These differences make a large impact on the way

companies need to deal with the middle management, it seems from the data

gathered that the companies may need to give more training in cultural

behaviour and language to the middle managers before sending them abroad.

This will enable the company to protect the safety of its middle managers and

provide them with the skills needed for the job which at the moment seems to

be an overlooked area. The social contract is also another area to be

safeguarded by the company, in many instances in the findings the middle

managers gave a feeling of abandonment and loss of importance which

demoralised and alienated some of them to the point that they lost respect for

the company; which on the long run could have caused losses, damages or

even loss of personnel to the company. Therefore the suggestion is to look

more closely at expatriate middle managers, train them, make them feel part

of the company and appreciated and give them the psychological and

technical support that they are asking for.

87

Appendix

1. Interview questions.

How does it feel to be in a new country?

What did u do before going abroad?

Have you worked as a middle manager in other countries before or is

it your first time on this position abroad?

How are you finding the local people? Are there many differences

compared to your home country?

Research open ended questions

So, what do you normally do on a normal day at work; for example

your duties, the way you spend your lunch breaks etc..

Did you receive any training you think was useful in order to overcome

general cultural problems as a middle manager (may vary on position,

I won’t ask as middle manager but will use the right title of position,

e.g. Technical supervisor, personnel manager etc...)?

Why did you chose to take up this assignment abroad?

Are there any particular things that you enjoy about your current job

abroad?

Can you recall and describe any instances when you felt comfortable,

stressed or bored and why?

Is there any reason which would push you to prefer staying in your

expatriate position or go back to the central office?

Can you describe the first memorable memory you had from your

experience abroad outside of the work area?

88

Were there any events that left a mark in your memory during your

stay? It can be both job related or simply socialising.

Have you had any problem integrating in the new culture? If yes, can

you give me an example and a description of what happened?

How is your relation with the top management and your subordinates

abroad? Give me some examples if possible of interaction between

you and them please.

Do you feel you are taken in account every time you raise an issue?

Are there any instances that you can describe experiencing any

problems dealing with either personnel or top managers?

What were the differences between dealing with your assignment as a

middle manager compared to being a managing director? (This

question is reserved to people who have now gone to the position of

managing director).

2. List of managers.

Jack, I.T manager.

Jim, Commercial manager.

Ron, Personnel manager.

Jimmy, Project coordinator.

Alfred, Payroll manager.

Robert, Personnel director.

Sonny, Personnel manager.

Sam, Managing director.

Luther, Personnel manager.

Arthur, Project coordinator.

89

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