In praise of ethnocentricity: Expatriate policies in European multinationals

The international HRM literature identifies different stages of internationalisation (ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, geocentric); with a progression towards the later, most “advanced” stage. This paper uses information from European international companies to argue that most organizations still organize international HRM along ethnocentric lines and that, for a number of reasons, they are right to do so. We argue that a model where nearly all cases fall into one category may have reached the limits of its usefulness.