Expatriate Staffing in Foreign Subsidiaries of Multinationals: A Literature Review

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to present a literature review of the published journal articles, from 1975 to 2016, related to the topic of expatriate staffing in foreign subsidiaries of MNCs. This chapter explains the main ideas, major findings and core limitations of the 37 articles searched via Web of Science T Core Collection. Then, it gives the main ideas of other 32 articles found as a result of a legacy search to expand the review. The authors found that the number of firms/cases and parent/host countries in the studies is often limited, which makes it hard to generalize the findings. As revealed in recent studies, the results indicate that MNCs choose local-hired foreign managers for their subsidiary management teams as well as locals and expatriates. It is believed that this review will act as a guide for postgraduates, researchers, academicians, and professionals for their future work.