South Korean expatriate managers? relationship with their home and host countries in the context of culturel differences and similarities: A comparative analysis

In this research, it is aimed to investigate relationships of expatriate managers with their home and host countries in the context of cultural similarities and differences. There are one home and two host countries in the sample group of the research. The host countries have been determined according to being a similar and a different culture to the home country?s national culture. National culture is defined as a cognitive and practical constitution produced by a society and explains differences and characteristics of this society. In addition expatriation is defined as a working process in the out of the country by an international assignment for a determined and limited time. By the view of these two concepts, relationships of South Korean expatriate managers with their home and host countries who are assigned by their organization for working in Turkey and USA were investigated. The model which was proposed by Black and Gregerson in 1992 and modified in 2006 by Richardson and McKenna was used for analysing relationships. The subject of this study is not being researched well enough in the Turkish business literature. On the other hand, in the international literature the studies on this subject are limited and particularly there are very few studies in the context of cultural dimensions. For that reason, it is aimed to provide a point of view from the cultural perspective in the context of sociology, psychology and management. The research has been done in the context of 3 countries as South Korea, Turkey and USA because of limited time and cost. The participants of the research were reached by trace method and data analyses were done in QSR Nvivo software with thematic and content analyses. The number of the questions for interviews is 12 and they were determined according describing relationships with countries and exploring cultural effects on them.The findings of the research are evaluated about cultural sensitivity, cultural interest and perceptions of the expatriate managers, relationships with home and host countries, the effects of cultural themes on these relations and cultural metaphors about being in a foreign culture during expatriation. The cultural themes are categorized into 5 groups such as individual characteristics, social characteristics, working culture, social relations and communication features of the countries. In this context, it has been determined that the relationship of South Korean expatriate managers with their home country is very strong and their relationships with host countries are changing according to the cultural similarities and differences between their home and host countries.The profiles of participated expatriate managers are located on ?hearts at home? and ?dual citizens? typologies and also any participant is not found in the ?go native? and ?free agents? typologies. According to the findings of the research, it can be seen that cultural similarities have certain positive effects on relationships and cultural differences have two different effects like being positive and negative. They can cause relationships to be strong or weak which depends on the perceptions of the managers. In the results of the metaphorical analysis, it is found that expatriate managers, who are in Turkey, describe the expatriation experience as an exciting, unknown, different, unstable, uncertain and struggling process. On the other hand, for managers in USA, this experience looks so exciting but stressful, uncertain but different, changing fast, need more integration and becoming a united whole.