Understanding Expatriate Assignment in Basf

Globalization has led to keen competition not only in global economies, but also Human Resources Management, The increasing importance of global market and increasing world mobility lead to increase of expatriates. According to the research conducted by Sibson Consulting in fall 2009 , there is a generally decrease in the use of expatriate assignment during economics downturn, high cost of expatriate assignment is the main reason. However, expatriate assignments increases when economy recovers.

Global Relocation Trends Survey 2010 states that 44 percent of multinational firms expected the number of international assignments to increase in 2010. According to United Nations (UN) statistics, 2010 and 2011 have seen a steady increase in the number of expatriate jobs from most industries once again being advertised. Expatriate has an increasing significant role to multi-national corporations. Success of international human resources management is determined by the success of expatriate assignments.

Also, there is an increasing significance of expatriate assignments in emerging market. The strong economic activities from emerging market led to the increase in international assignments. China is now ranked 10th in international expatriate ranking. Besides, there is evolving of new program as the substitutes of expatriate assignments to reduce the cost. There are Short-Term Assignment, Commuter-Assignment, Local Plus “Expat Lite” Policies and FlexPat Policies.

Methodology

An interview with the HR manager of BASF will be done to get primary data.

Interview her to not only get the selection criteria or geographic data but also some real life situations. BASF is the largest multi-national corporation in Chemical Industry. It can truly represent the practice and culture of expatriate assignment in Chemical Industry. Compare the differences between their benefits/terms and those we studied in the books to have an overview of expatriate assignment in BASF and Chemical Industry. Intensive secondary data research will be done so that we can collect data from annual reports, web page, and internet.

Mainly we will focus on some numerical data such as the trend, number, nationality of expatriates, successful rate etc, if possible, some of the benefits and terms they have. Also, we would do literature review to get the correlation between expatriate assignment and some physical factors so to identify the critical factors. By looking at the case, we can see the general expatriate background and also the differences between Chemical industry practice and general practice in expatriate assignment.