Foreign Locals: Myth or Reality

Multinational corporations depend predominantly on staff from the country where their international operations are, yet there is scarcity of international business literature which target towards these employees. The literature has referred them as “host-country nationals” (HCNs) this label gives them an individuality that is strongly related to the culture of their home country. Caprar (2011) identified these HCN’s as foreign locals. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of four cultural dimensions on employee’s perceived performance and innovativeness and how the foreign locals influence this impact as a moderator. Data were collected from Pakistani employees working in one Pakistani and one Norwegian Based MNE. SEM technique using MLE was used for data analysis. Results show that foreign localness moderate the proposed relationships. These relationships are less-stronger and/or insignificant for Pakistani employees working in Pakistani organizations and are significant and/or more-stronger for Pakistani employees working in Norwegian MNE.