Expatriate staffing in foreign subsidiaries of Japanese multinational corporations in the PRC and the United States

This study examines expatriate staffing in foreign wholly-owned subsidiarie s and joint ventures of Japanese firms located in the People's Republic of China and the United States. Expatriates are conceptualized as performing t wo primary functions. The first is a control function in which the expatria te works to align the operations of the subsidiary with that of the Japanes e parent. The second function is a knowledge role. In this role, either the expatriate acts to transfer the Japanese parent's knowledge to the subsidi ary or the expatriate is an agent for the acquisition of host-country knowl edge. We tested for these two functions using subsidiary-level data on Japa nese firms' operations in China and the US. Our results indicate that the c ontrol function was more prominent in joint ventures in China than in the U S. The results also indicate that expatriates played a more significant kno wledge-transfer function role in technology and marketing-intensive industr ies in China than in the US. A lack of MNC experience in China was found to be associated with limited use of expatriates. Finally, expatriate employm ent was negatively related to the number of subsidiaries of the parent comp any worldwide.