ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three stages of the expatriate assignment: preparation, the international experience, and repatriation. It examines the long-term assignment holistically to understand the employee and his or her family in the domestic and international contexts. The chapter presents an expatriate assignment that also has the potential to contribute to the evolution of a firm's orientation from a local to a global outlook. It begins with common ways of preparing for an international assignment. This includes language training and cross-cultural training (CCT). There is also the international expatriate community in the new location to get to know a group consisting of business people and their families from many different organizations who live and work nearby. Both social scientists and laypeople use the term culture shock to define, in very broad terms, the unpleasant consequences of experiencing a foreign culture. Culture shock usually occurs in the following four stages: the honeymoon stage, irritation and hostility, gradual adjustment, and biculturalism.
