A Latent Profile Analysis of Expatriate's Assessment of the Local Business Environment: Cross Country Comparisons

Abstract

The assessment expatriates make of the business environment of their host country reflects social comparison mechanisms and has an influence on multinational enterprises' approaches to specific countries. We conduct a latent profile analysis and identify three different profiles of expatriates regarding their assessment of the local business environment. We then analyze different individual and organizational-level predictors and find that nationality, mode of expatriation, organization size, and host country are associated with specific assessments of the local business environment. Overall, self-initiated expatriates make more positive assessments of their host country than assigned expatriates. Expatriates in Qatar and Saudi Arabia make more extreme assessments of the local business environment than those in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. We believe this is the first paper checking the important issue of how expatriates are distributed along different profiles based on the assessment they make of their host country, within a cross-country comparison framework.