Abstract
International assignments are widely used by multinational corporations for a multitude of reasons. International assignments help fulfil strategic objectives, they are a key component of managerial training, and they develop employees and the organisation. Employees who go on international assignments often come back with a broader understanding of their subject, the organisation and the global business arena. Naturally, these repatriated employees are valuable to multinational corporations who wish to have knowledgeable and competent employees. It should then be worrying that repatriates often have far higher turnover rates than their domestic counterparts, and this phenomenon should be sought to be reduced. In the current study, I identify turnover intention and organisational commitment as key measurements in the evaluation of international assignment, and treat them as dependent variables. To try to understand the variance in these variables, three highly relevant independent variables are presented; the relative responsibility of the employee before and after the international assignment, how much support has been made available to the employee in relation to his or her international assignment, and for what reason and by whom the international assignment was initiated. The current study further attempts to find evidence of organisational self-initiated expatriates and assigned expatriates as separate factors in the case at hand. These are the result of recent developments in international assignment literature, and show potential in both research and literature as useful constructs. The variables are investigated in a large, multinational Norwegian corporation where international assignments are highly prevalent. A questionnaire is constructed to measure the variables quantitatively, and a series of analyses are run to assess the hypotheses generated through theory and anecdotal evidence from the organisation. The results of the study show that the relative level of responsibility before and after the international assignment is the single most important factor in predicting the dependent variables. Support practice availability also significantly predicts turnover intention but not organisational commitment. Finally, there is found partial evidence for a separate assigned expatriate and organisational self-initiated expatriate factor. These factors show some interesting relationships to other factors recorded. All results and their practical implications are discussed within the thesis.