مدیریت غیرقانونی چین در بازارهای نوظهور: چشم انداز مزیت رقابتی Chinese expatriate management in emerging markets: A competitive advantage perspective

1. Introduction Chinese multinational corporations (CMNCs) are notable for their extensive use of expatriates. According to official Chinese data, at the end of 2013 over one million Chinese expatriates were employed by about 15,000 CMNCs, alongside 967,000 employees from the workforces of host countries (MOC, 2014). Based on this figure, CMNCs’ expatriate ratio (the percentage of expatriates to total employees overseas) was over 50%. This seems significantly higher than that of other MNCs including Japanese MNCs (Oki, 2013). CMNCs’ use of large numbers of expatriates has caused tensions and occasional violent incidents against them (e.g. BBC, 6 Oct, 2010; The Guardian, 6 Feb, 2011). The negative image is reinforced by the impression that expatriates are brought in mainly to exploit cheap labour, and by the unusual extent to which CMNCs deploy their own workers as well as managers to overseas operations. “While the existing literature on managing people in MNCs primarily focuses on the challenges of managing locals and a relatively small number of skilled expatriates, Chinese MNCs have increasingly brought semi- and unskilled labor with them into developing countries in Africa; this development has far-reaching organizational, developmental, political, and even demographic dimensions” (Wilkinson et al., 2014, p. 836). Despite this observation, there has been little research exploring potential motives for CMNCs’ heavy use of expatriates, and especially their use of semi- and unskilled workers, and how they assist management in creating competitive advantage. The widely applied resource based view of the firm posits that, for a MNC to attain lasting competitive advantage, it must take with it hard-to-imitate strategic assets. Competitive advantage can be derived from a variety of country-of-origin and host-country contextual factors (Kothari et al., 2013; Luo and Zhang, 2016). As DMNCs’ most important strategic resource is perceived to be their cuttingedge knowledge and best management practice (Edwards and Rees, 2016), expatriates contribute to firms’ competitive advantage through transferring such technology. DMNCs use strategic HRM to promote this expatriate role. EMNCs have become important global market players in the last decade, contributing 42% of global total FDI and playing an even more important role in emerging markets (UNCTAD, 2015).