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Japanese self‐initiated expatriates as boundary spanners in Chinese subsidiaries of Japanese MNEs: Antecedents, social capital, and HRM practices
Author(s) -
Furusawa Masayuki,
Brewster Chris
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
thunderbird international business review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.553
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1520-6874
pISSN - 1096-4762
DOI - 10.1002/tie.21944
Subject(s) - subsidiary , china , social capital , normative , business , boundary spanning , multinational corporation , human capital , sociology , economic geography , political science , economic growth , economics , law , social science , knowledge management , finance , computer science
This article examines the potential boundary‐spanning roles of Japanese self‐initiated expatriates (SIEs) working at Japanese‐affiliated companies in China. We show that, compared to Japanese assigned expatriates (AEs), Japanese SIEs have longer living and working experience in China and better linguistic proficiency in Chinese, and build a relationship of trust with Japanese AEs, Chinese employees, and the headquarters in Japan. We also find human resource management (HRM) practices that emphasize normative integration will lead to the nurturing of trust (social capital) among the parties concerned, and the social capital will enhance the boundary‐spanning functions of Japanese SIEs. This research demonstrates the value of these SIEs as a new option to replace the dichotomy of AEs or host‐country nationals and the importance of practices for normative integration and social capital, which can be expected to facilitate the boundary‐spanning roles of Japanese SIEs.