Appraisal process of Swedish expatriates : - How does Scandinavian culture affect it?

Abstract: As globalization influences today’s world markets, many organisations are becoming global. An important challenge facing multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the global market is to manage the performance appraisal of expatriates out on assignment. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the appraisal process of Swedish expatriates. There has been research on expatriate appraisals in the past; however, only few of them have focused on Scandinavian MNEs. Therefore, we will investigate the effect Scandinavian management style has on the appraisal process of Swedish expatriates.   The data in our thesis is collected through semi-structured interviews with listed Swedish MNEs. The empirical findings were then compared on our revised model that reflects the characteristics of Scandinavian management style.   The results of this thesis indicate that there are some relationships between characteristics of Scandinavian management style and the appraisal process of Swedish expatriates. A collaborative approach to Human Resource Management (HRM) practices is common in Scandinavian countries, as well as focus on creating a partnership culture between employer and employee and we found that such characteristics had a large impact on attributes in the appraisal process. Scandinavian MNEs can use the conclusions drawn from the study as guidelines for performing effective appraisals of their expatriates.   However, the findings are only a minor contribution to this poorly investigated field, which needs further investigation. Suggestion for future research could be to do a similar investigation on a larger scale, and with a bigger sample.