Outsiders in the Middle Kingdom: Expatriate managers in Chinese-Western joint ventures

Recently, there has been a tremendous boom in foreign direct investments in the People's Republic of China, most of which has been in Sino-foreign joint ventures. But despite many success stories, most expatriate foreign managers experience frustration. Ingmar Björkman and Annette Schaap present the results of a study of human resource issues related to the use of expatriates in Sino-Western joint ventures using data from 36 such undertakings. The authors then suggest some practical ways of best handling issues relating to the use of expatriates in China.