A comparative study of expatriate performance management in normative, remunerative and dual compliance contexts

Recent international management and strategic international human resource management literature on control in multinational enterprises has identified a role for expatriates as personal integrating mechanisms. This reflects efforts to strike the right control balance of global integration and local responsiveness, without continual need for structural realignment. In this paper, control and expatriate performance management were explored in three Australian multinational enterprises; two non-profits and one for profit. The unit of analysis was the dyadic relationship comprised of the expatriate and the multinational in the performance management operation. Organisational and individual-level implications for the feasibility of cultural control and implications for theory, research and practice conclude the paper.