Why companies have gotten the idea of ‘going local’ wrong.

Companies have always tried to keep their expat employees from going local.

According to corporate view, expatriates are the representatives of the company as well as the country headquarters is located in.

From this perspective, people who are ‘going local’ are betraying their companies. After all, if they are acting like the local people, then how can they be proper representatives of headquarters?

Going local ≠ complete adaptation

First of all, it is impossible for a person to think and act 100% ‘like a local’. Especially in a time-frame of 10 years or so, nobody would ever be able to achieve this.

We simply can not fully eradicate how we have been socialized from the time of our childhood onward.

Certain core values, beliefs and assumptions have been so strongly ingrained into our psyche that we are never going to be able to erase them completely. They are forming the foundation of who we are and will always continue to influence our own sense of self.

A person can certainly act ‘like a local’. But if you dig deep enough, you will find that the core values of his or her original culture are still there.

Yes… cultural adaptation can lead to temporary behavioral problems

The main problem of expatriates trying to adapt to the cultural environment is that they are likely to experience temporary problems in terms of communicating with those around them and achieving the desired results.

Exposure to another cultural environment leads to identity crises.

Naturally, expatriates are struggling at first to get their intended meaning across to local colleagues as they are faced with a completely different belief- and value system.

This causes them not only to be perceived in a completely different way by local employees than they were used to in their culture of origin, but also to feel a lack of competence that they have never experienced before.

Companies should support their expatriates in the process of adapting to the new environment instead of ingraining into them the belief that this is a wrong thing to do

Cultural adaptation, when done correctly, means that the expatriate learns to be fully functional in both cultures.

Expatriates go through a process of self-discovery, during which they find ways of creating synthesis between the beliefs of their original cultural conditioning and the beliefs of their host culture.

In other words, they do not simply ‘eradicate’ who they used to be and ‘become like a local’, but rather they are becoming a mixture of both.

Individuals competent in both cultures provide unique benefits for companies

Of course, adapting to another cultural environment is a process that takes a significant amount of time.

From that perspective, expatriate assignments are a long-term process with the individual being placed in a particular culture potentially for years.

However, the potential benefits of such an assignment are huge. Expats who are successful in becoming competent in both their culture of origin as well as their host culture, can bring several unique competencies to the field:

• they can act as facilitators and mediators between headquarters and the local subsidiary
• their insights into the local culture can provide market insights and serve as the groundwork for localized innovation
• they can bring unique perspectives into any problem-solving process through their ability to look at the issue from various different angles
• they can help to create a diverse working environment with high levels of productivity and innovation through their unique conflict-solving skills

So, what are the next steps?

If you buy into the old notion that ‘going local’ is a significant problems for overseas assignments, I encourage you to rethink your perception around it.

‘Going local’ doesn’t mean that the expatriate suddenly turns into somebody from a completely different culture. That simply isn’t possible.

Rather, there are two options on how an expatriate can develop:

1. he simply ‘stays true to his or her roots’ meaning that he is hardly changing at all, primarily staying within his expat bubble and perhaps even rejecting the local culture.
2. he develops the capability to act competently in both cultural environments by integrating some beliefs of the local culture into his own belief system

The second type of development for an expatriate is significantly more valuable from a corporate perspective.

He or she learns how to bridge the differences between both cultures and therefore is capable of making a significant contribution to the company’s success abroad.

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