Defining the R&D expatriate assignment strategies of globalized high technology enterprises by hybrid MCDM models

During the past decades, the research and development (R&D) globalization has already become an emerging trend for the high technology firms due to the driving forces, including competitive situation, foreign market expansions, available human resources, and etc. Albeit scholars tried to propose a lot of criteria for expatriate assignment evaluations, very limited decision frameworks were proposed. Further, most of the existing frameworks were based on an unreal assumption of independence of criteria. Thus, this research aims to resolve the above mentioned expatriate assignment problem. A Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique based hybrid multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method with Analytic Network Process (ANP), as well as the VlseKriterijumskaOptimizacija I KompromisnoResenje (VIKOR) will be proposed for selecting the most suitable candidate. A hybrid MCDM framework consisting of four dimensions, including background, capability, support and personality as well as sixteen criteria, including work experiences, education level, language skill, etc. was proposed. An empirical study based on a Taiwan based world leading information technology (IT) equipment manufacturer was introduced for verifying the feasibility of this framework. The empirical analysis result demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed analytic framework. Further, dimensions, including capability, personal background and personality were regarded as the most important or important dimensions while language skill, social skill, personal willingness, communication skill, and execution capabilities were regarded as the most important criteria. In the future, the proposed VIKOR based hybrid MCDM framework can be used for expatriate evaluation and staffing policy definitions.