The Relationship between Foreign Transfers and U.S. Companies’ International Strategies

This paper relates the different motives for transferring employees internationally to the conduct of each major international strategy (multidomestic, global, and transnational), proposes seven hypotheses on these relationships, presents and discusses the results of a survey of heads of human resources or international operations in United States based companies, and concludes with theoretical and practitioner implications of the study and suggestions for future research. We found significant support for three hypotheses and directional support for two others.