Expatriate Satisfaction and Motivation in Multinational Corporations

Employee satisfaction and motivation have an important influence on individual employees and the performance of companies. In international business and marketing, where expatriates play important roles, regional cultures and institutional factors impact their satisfaction and motivation. This chapter aims to find out what kind of regional cultures and institutions have an impact on employee satisfaction and motivation in multinational corporations (MNCs), using theoretical analysis and the results from around 100 Japanese expatriates' questionnaires. It was possible to find the satisfaction and motivation-related characteristics of expatriates in MNCs from the results of their interviews and the questionnaire survey, which indicated that Japanese expatriates working in the USA, Singapore, and Indonesia had a higher job satisfaction degree than those working in cultural regions, such as China, Taiwan, and Australia. Moreover, the results showed that compared with other industries, in the sales and marketing industry, the Japanese expatriates had the lowest satisfaction degree after repatriation, although their satisfaction degree was higher during expatriation and after a career change. The reasons relating to regional cultures and institutions, and some methods and human resource management practices in international marketing and trading that were analyzed are expected to raise expatriates' satisfaction and motivation.