The role of political competence in global assignments of expatriate managers

Abstract

Many expatriate managers have had difficulty in successfully adjusting to the demands of increasingly complex global assignments. There has been a wide range of generic explanations why the level of dissatisfaction with expatriate global competence has increased. One aspect that has not received significant attention when examining this problem has been the assessment of expatriate managers' political competence. The self-confidence and the social astuteness, plus the ability to adapt to social settings, to gain the confidence of others, to have influence on others and being viewed as genuine/sincere, are the indicators of an expatriate manager's political competence. This paper employs a political competency-based approach to global assignments. Therefore, a means to assess the level of political competence of expatriate managers is developed in the paper.