**1. Introduction**

Globalization has created a lot of opportunities and challenges in the world economy, especially for trade and marketing enterprises, as well as employees. The performance of multinational corporations (MNCs) and trading industries are significantly impacted by culture, institutions, as well as economic and political factors. Further, as internal impact factors, employees' motivation and job satisfaction also have a crucial influence on the accomplishments of MNCs and the trading and marketing industry.

Expatriates play important roles in globalization and international marketing and trading. The term "expatriates" refers to home country nationals, who are assigned from headquarters to work in overseas subsidiaries for 3–5 years. After their expatriation assignment, they can repatriate to their headquarters, and utilize their experiences and knowledge from their overseas assignment [1]. When they work overseas, they have to adapt to the local culture and institutional environment.

Expatriates are considered as special and important employees in MNCs. Japanese MNCs mainly promote localization in Europe and America. However, in overseas subsidiaries of Japanese MNCs in Asian countries, Japanese expatriates from headquarters still play important roles, instead of local employees, even though localization is also conducted gradually in these subsidiaries. However, the job satisfaction and motivation of these Japanese expatriates needs to be raised, given that, some of them quit during the expatriation period without repatriating to headquarters, as scheduled. This brings significant damage to both the overseas subsidiaries and headquarters of the Japanese MNCs.

Employee satisfaction and motivation have an important influence on individual employees and the performance of companies. In the international marketing and trading business, expatriates play important roles. Previous literature indicates that expatriates' satisfaction and motivation will be impacted by regional cultures and institutional factors. This chapter addresses the research gaps relating to the kinds of regional cultures and institutions that have an impact on expatriates' satisfaction and motivation in MNCs. The results obtained from the interviews and questionnaire survey, were able to reveal the characteristics related to satisfaction and motivation of Japanese expatriates in MNCs. Furthermore, reasons related to regional culture and institutional issues, and some methods and human resource management practices in international business that were analyzed, are expected to raise employee satisfaction and motivation. Some topics for future research are also discussed in the final part of this chapter.

#### **2. Previous literature**

#### **2.1 Culture**

Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies, as stated in Wikipedia [2].

Moreover, culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups [3].

Japan is a country with a long history and a unique culture. When Japanese expatriates work overseas, culture and the institutional environment are very important for them. Japan's traditional employment style is career employment, with a relational psychological contract between the employees and employers being common, along with collectivism in their high context society [4]. However, in recent years, performance-based pay system has been introduced in Japan. Meanwhile, in some cases, the psychological contract is also changing from relational to transactional.

It has been stated [5] that context refers to the environment, in which people carried out their communications, considering society, psychology, timing, etc. According to Ferraro [6], high to low context levels exist in Japan, China, Arabia, Greece, Spain, Italy, English, France, America, and Germany. Hence, people in various cultures and context environments carry out communications in different ways. Especially in advanced countries and emerging economies, management approaches and lifestyles differ greatly. In high context culture environments, people share detailed information with group members more frequently and implicitly. On the contrary, in low context cultural countries or regions, people talk more frankly with each other.

*Expatriate Satisfaction and Motivation in Multinational Corporations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97046*

Other scholars have pointed out that leadership could not transcend cultures. Leadership styles in the USA and Middle East are significantly different. Managers in the United Arab Emirates are found to be less transformational and more passive than managers in the USA and Europe [7]. Differences in leadership styles in various cultural organizations cause frustration and conflict among managers [8].

Organizations also have their own company cultures. A strong company culture helps to reduce management and monitoring costs, and also serves as a good reference of a behavior model. It facilitates information transference and raises a company's work efficiency. It even has an influence on organization transformation. However, a company's culture will be influenced by the culture of the country in which it is located, and its leadership style. Therefore, cultures in companies or countries have significant impact on the performance of both employees and organizations.

#### **2.2 Institutions**

Institutions have been described as "integrated systems of rules that structure social interactions" [9].

Moreover, institutions can refer to mechanisms which govern the behavior of a set of individuals within a given community, and are also identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions, by mediating the rules that govern living behavior [10].

#### **2.3 Institutions and governance/management**

From the perspective of new institutional economics, it has been stated [11] that institutions would change, along with the economy and environment. In different regions, there are various institutions and cultures. These theories are implemented in business strategy, corporate governance, and property. Governance has been divided into two kinds: relational and hierarchical governance [12]. In developing countries or regions, where institutions or laws are not that advanced, it is easier to control people's behaviors through personal relationship networks, the culture of a company or country, or societal ethics, which is called relational governance. On the contrary, in advanced countries or regions, where institutions and managements are developed to a relatively high extent, people can be controlled by rules, manuals, or institutions at a high level, which is called hierarchical governance.

Hence, in this globalized world, businesses freely advance into many countries and regions across the world. However, we cannot ignore the cultural and institutional characteristics of every country or region since invisible culture walls exist between different countries. Hence, the important concept of "semi-globalization" exists [13]. When actively promoting a trading or marketing business in foreign countries, it is also necessary to respect the differences in culture and institutional environments between host countries and the headquarter country.

#### **2.4 Motivation**

In 1970, Maslow [14] proposed the 5 levels of hierarchy of needs theory. These basic needs of human beings have a significant relationship with employees' motivation.

Motivation—derived from the word "motive" or a need that requires satisfaction—is a reason for actions, willingness, and goals. These needs, wants or desires may be acquired through the influence of culture, society, lifestyle, or may be generally innate, as has been stated in Wikipedia [15]. Individuals' motivation could be inspired by outside forces (extrinsic motivation) [16], or those within individuals because it is naturally satisfying to them (intrinsic motivation) [17].

In a company, there are many kinds of extrinsic motivation, such as compensation, bonus, promotions, expanded responsibility, awards, opportunity of on-job or off job training, travelling, stock options, and related qualifications. Additionally, emotions have an influence on motivation, and positive emotions can also raise one's motivation [18]. Hence, favorable personal relationship networks and workplace environments are also important for employees' motivation and job satisfaction. Such extrinsic motivators can also be called incentives to some extent. The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in business has been emphasized [19].

#### **2.5 Incentives**

An incentive is something that motivates or drives one to do something or behave in a certain way [20]. There are two type of incentives—intrinsic and extrinsic—that affect human decision making, as stated in Wikipedia [21]. Intrinsic incentives motivate persons to do something out of their own self-interest or desires, without any outside pressures or promised rewards [22], whereas extrinsic incentives are motivated by rewards, such as an increase in pay for achieving a certain result; or avoiding punishments such as disciplinary action, or criticism as a result of not doing something [20, 22].

The expectancy theory [23] posits that an individual's motivation is a function of two factors: (i) expectancy about the relationship between the effort and a particular outcome and (ii) the valence of that outcome. Monetary incentives like compensation have valence for a variety of reasons. Therefore, employees' motivation and subsequent efforts are significantly high if compensation is based on performance.

It has been stated that items that motivate and incentivize expatriates, include providing effective programs before or during expatriation, reasonable selection and promotions, fare performance evaluations, attractive compensation during expatriation, full consideration or correspondence for their families, career up or career design considerations, etc. [24]. This is because these items comprise important contents of psychological contracts between expatriates and their headquarters, which expatriates expect their headquarters to conscientiously fulfill.

## **3. Research methods**

To find the difference in expatriates' satisfaction degree between various industries (sales and marketing, manufacturing, service, etc.), a questionnaire survey was conducted in 2015, which revealed distinct characteristics of various regions or countries such as USA, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Australia, etc. The questionnaires were distributed to around 100 Japanese expatriates, who were required to answer satisfaction and motivation-related questions pertaining to their last expatriation of more than a year's duration. The expatriates were older than 25 years, their job types included civil servants, company employees, freelancers, etc., and their education qualifications ranged from high school graduates to doctorates (see **Tables 1**–**3**).

#### **4. Results of the questionnaire survey**

Based on the aforementioned questionnaire survey, this section summarizes its results based on categories, such as industries, job types, and regions.




**Table 1.**

*Job satisfaction during expatriation.*




**Table 2.**

*Job satisfaction after repatriation.*



*Global Trade in the Emerging Business Environment*

**Table 3.** *Job satisfaction after a career change.*
