Organizational Strategies to Manage Expatriate Worries about Pollution Levels in Megacities

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how a large European infrastructure developer responded to expatriate worries about high outdoor pollution levels in the Indian megacity Delhi. We present an exploratory case study obtained from a three months project with close university/company interaction, both with the head office in Oslo Norway and the Delhi office. Fact assessment showed that pollution levels are high and rising, with significant expected increase in asthma, cardiac diseases and mortality in the winter months. The results show that the employees compare home office environment with the Delhi office, and compare the company actions plans with other companies’ problem solving initiatives. Cost considerations were not important in the development of the response plan but in the implementation phase (specific decisions) and the results further shows that the characteristics of the internal process are important. We present a company response plan to a real-life situation, and this plan could be used by other companies as well. From the company perspective, the paper points towards a challenging issue of similar or dissimilar handling of local employees versus expatriates. Destination characteristics such as air pollution have attained limited focus in expatriate research, and a major contribution of this paper is to present facts and possible solutions as well as comments on future research needs.