Training and Development on Employee Engagement Practices: Indian Expatriates Who Are Sent to China

China's domestic market is becoming increasingly attractive for foreign companies to establish their operations there, due to new business opportunities and the cheap labour force. To enable consistent business practices throughout the whole company, many MNEs are sending managers on an international assignment to China for a few years. These managers, or Indian expatriates, are ‘utilised in foreign operations for control and accountability, their technical skills, their knowledge of products and to provide international exposure to key personnel for development purposes’ (Romero, 2002). However, these international assignments do not always come without problems. ‘China continues to present one of the most difficult challenges to Western firms for ensuring successful, long-term assignments’ (Weiss and Bloom, 1990). The main reason for expatriate failure is the inability of the expatriate or the expatriate's family to adjust to the new living and working environment (Weiss and Bloom, 1990; Forster, 2000; Hutchings, 2005). Companies could try to tackle this problem by providing pre-departure cross-cultural training for their Indian expatriates. Hence, companies should comprehend the positive effect pre-departure cross-cultural training has on the adjustment of Indian expatriates who are sent to China. Even managers who were (somewhat) familiar with the Chinese culture considered Pre-departure Training and Development helpful. Training the Indian expatriates can considerably decrease the number of failed assignments and also create a competitive advantage in the global business arena (Waxin and Panaccio, 2005).