1. ¹Department of Business Administration, Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
2. ²Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
3. ³School of Business Administration, College of Management, Rishon Le Zion, Israel
4. ⁴Sapir Academic College, Sderot, Israel
5. ⁵Mercer Human Resource Consulting

Correspondence: DM Brock, Department of Business Administration, Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University, PO Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. Tel: +972 8 647 9731; Fax: +972 8 647 7691; E-mail: dmb@bgu.ac.il

Received 14 November 2005; Revised 30 April 2007; Accepted 8 June 2007; Published online 7 February 2008.

Abstract

We hypothesize that expatriate deployment is a control function predicted by home country culture dimensions with transaction cost and agency repercussions (rather than culture in the aggregate). This departure from the traditional conceptualization and measurement of cultural impact also yields a hypothesized asymmetrical effect, which is tested for a multi-country sample of 236 multinational subsidiaries. Using multiple measures of national culture, hypotheses are supported, with assertiveness and power distance confirmed as prime predictors of expatriate deployment.