Who shall We Send?

The literature contains much discussion about which criteria should be applied to the selection of candidates for expatriate assignments. We designed an executive teaching exercise around this problem and obtained rankings of criteria from 12 of the leading international scholars in intercultural management, comparing these with data gathered from almost 700 business participants. Results indicate that their ratings converge with the expert rankings in many respects, especially in the high importance attached to personological factors; but diverge from experts in some particulars, such as undervaluing spouse support and overvaluing achievement drive. The article goes on to examine factors influencing their judgements. Of these, nationality has the most marked effects, with some particularly strong contrasts between Eastern and Western cultures. From our analysis we conclude that even so-called neutral criteria carry associated cultural value content, and that even the most sophisticated global executives are subject to biased assessments of these criteria.