CONCLUSION This chapter provides br

CONCLUSION
This chapter provides broad discussion for both academics and human resource specialists to better understand the topic of international assignee selection and assignee training and development. The discussion of international assignee selection included the topics of individuallevel antecedents of global assignee success, such as personality characteristics, language skills, and prior experience living in a different country, and the process issues for effectively selecting global assignees, such as realistic previews, self-selection, and assessment. The discussion of assignee training and development discussed the various interventions used to prepare international assignees to live and work in new cultural environments – with special focus on cross-cultural training programs, still the most commonly used intervention for improving crossnational competence.
It is important to note, from a practical perspective, that many of the selection, training, and development practices described in this chapter are known but not often practiced in multinational firms. The most apparent reasons for multinational firms’ continued oversight of these practices are that HR (in most firms) manages international assignments after a selection has been made (Brewster & Harris, 1999) and then with a limited budget for cross-cultural training and development activities once selected. As such, the HR role in international assignment management has been relegated to administrative and tactical activities – rather than strategic ones. Using a scientist-practitioner frame of reference, it is important that the gap between theory and practice is closed through solid program evaluation studies providing concrete financial evidence for the strategic use of the practices described in this chapter.
We believe that the key to improving success of individuals on international assignments is to understand the interaction of selection and training and development, that is, to determine who benefits the most from international training and development activities. Future research should examine more accurate methods for identifying those individuals with the requisite individual characteristics (e.g., personality) to succeed in other countries, the optimal level of cross-cultural training needed for international assignment success, and the long-term development of global competence that could result from the international assignments. Clearly, this is an important area that will keep researchers and practitioners alike engaged for many years to come.