Discuss the importance of creating a company "global mind-set."

Successful managers in international companies must demonstrate a combination of high knowledge differentiation and high knowledge integration.

Explain the relationship between competitive strategies (home replication, multidomestic, regional, and transnational) and international human resource management approaches (ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, and global).

Recognize that competitive strategy should be a primary determinant of the IHRM policies that an IC will use.

Compare home country, host country, and third country nationals as IC executives.

Sources of IC executives may be the home country, host countries, or third countries, and their differing culture, language, ability, and experience can strengthen IC management.

Explain the difficulties of finding qualified executives for international companies (ICs) and the importance of foreign language knowledge.

Knowledge of a people's language is essential to understand its culture and to know what's going on, as every effective manager must.

Explain what an expatriate is and some of the challenges and opportunities of an expat position.

Expatriate positions allow employees to work in foreign locations, which can provide the foundation for learning and growth, both personally and professionally, and a basis for movement upward in an organization's hierarchy. Expats can also find themselves "out of sight, out of mind," with unclear performance objectives and bases for performance evaluation. The families of many expatriates find the adjustment to a foreign posting difficult to manage successfully.

Explain the increasing importance of accommodating the trailing spouse of an expatriate executive.

The growing prevalence of two-career families is complicating problems of accommodating the spouse of an executive who is being transferred to another country.

Identify some of the complications of compensation packages for expatriate executives.

Expatriate manager compensation packages can be extremely complicated. Among other sources of complications are fluctuating currency exchange rates and differing inflation rates. Basic elements of those packages are salaries, allowances, and bonuses.