Fancy being our man in China?

A year or two's work abroad sounds good, writes Roger Trapp. But read this first.

One of the biggest lures for graduates entering the job market is the prospect of foreign travel. Though more and more young people are opting to work for small organisations, this carrot still helps organisations such as Shell, Arthur Andersen and Ford to attract a big share of the best and brightest.

At university, the idea of a couple of years somewhere like China or the former Soviet Union can be enticing. The reality, though, is often somewhat different.

According to a study of expatriate management in 36 British companies over the past two years, made by Nick Forster of Cardiff Business School, companies setting up operations in countries such as China must "expect the unexpected and obstacles at all levels".

Expatriate staff need to build strong personal relationships with bureaucrats and others who can help. In China, for instance, staff need to take a long-term view, devotetime to developing contacts, take care over their appearance and punctuality and accept that they will always be seen as foreigners. Individuals need to realise that life will be more difficult for them and their partners than if they had gone to the United States or even a country such as Germany, where they would have to master a foreign language. Not only will the surroundings be very different, it will often be extremely time-consuming to perform tasks that they take for granted, such as using telephones or travelling around.

Stress levels are high. The crucial development of contacts in the government and elsewhere requires enormous persistence in the face of bureaucratic obstacles. "The best expatriate in this situation will not only be a technical specialist," writes Nick Forster, "but a fast-learning, open-minded diplomat and negotiator".

There are several other issues young managers need to consider. With the increasing globalisation of business, companies of all sizes - but particularly large international groups such as the Swedish-Swiss engineering company ABB, the international oil companies and car makers - are talking about developing "international managers". Yet, Mr Forster points out, few companies have "any coherent view of what this actually means or what their international workforces will look like in the future". Most see an international manager as a loose description of someone who is potentially or currently abroad on an international assignment, regardless of whether it is a part of an overall policy of developing international managers.

For all the talk of career planning, Mr Forster's analysis suggests that this area suffers as much from short-term thinking as anything else. "There seems to be little integration of HRM [human resources management] and long-term strategic planning," he writes.

It is difficult to accept "the rhetoric of 'internationalisation'," he adds, "as expatriates "still represent only a tiny proportion of the overall size of the collaborating companies' workforces. Their operations may be more globalised - their staff, overwhelmingly, are not."

At the same time, almost all the employees and dependants questioned as part of the survey found the concept of the "international manager" equally meaningless. It did not fit with their own career goals. "Very few would recognise themselves as being actually, or potentially, globe- trotting nomads moving from region to region for the rest of their lives," writes Mr Forster. Indeed, he suggests, many see international assignments as simply a lucrative opportunity to live and work abroad for a while. "The idea that these job moves are somehow part of a long-term plan to convert them into truly international managers would strike almost all of them as ridiculous."

However, there is some good news for one group: women. Mr Forster's survey found "a surprisingly high number of women expatriates". This is a distinct change from the profiles of expatriate managers of a decade ago.

He attributes the finding to several factors: many of the companies surveyed were relatively new to the international scene and as a result of downsizing may not have had enough older male expatriates to fill overseas posts; some companies have actually pushed the careers of bright young women recruits; many of the companies operate in sectors, such as finance, retail and marketing, that have traditionally recruited women.

Nevertheless, the women are likely to be younger, in a narrower range of fields and less senior in the hierarchy than their male counterparts - suggesting, says Mr Forster, that a glass ceiling exists in international careers.