Expatriate Management Practices in Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

Oil and gas sector is one of the biggest commercial sectors in the world in terms of revenues, using millions of workers across the globe and contributing to the global GDP. The oil and gas sector is among the eight core industries in India and plays a major role in influencing decision making for all the other important sections of the economy. newlineThe crude oil producing countries are scattered throughout the globe with major crude producing countries concentrate in Middle East Asia, American Sub Continent and Asia Pacific Region, the refining hubs lie in the USA, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. This gigantic and truly global nature of oil and gas Sector necessitates Indian oil and gas industry to allow flow of human talent across international boundary lines, often requiring short term, medium term, and long term deputation of people in foreign, and sometimes remote locations. Hence, expatriate management, involving relocation to foreign land, and repatriation back home after return of people is critical to the smooth functioning of operations in oil and gas sector. newlineSince the direct and indirect cost to expatriate failure and repatriate turnover can be quite high, it is imperative for organizations to understand the factors that could plausibly cause them. newlineKeeping the importance of the above subject, the present study aims to predict the phenomenon of expatriate failure in select major oil and gas companies in India, ONGC Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., and Reliance Industries Ltd from a set of three independent variables namely inadequate selection process, inadequate cross cultural training and inadequate pre departure arrangements and support. The research also aimed at explaining turnover intention among the repatriates. For this purpose, unfulfilled expectations of expatriate and ineffective repatriation practices of a company were contemplated as independent variables. newline newline