DEALING WITH CREATIVITY IN A MNC ENVIRONMENT: THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF THE EXPATRIATE LEADER

The analysis of the role of the expatriate leader in a multinational context concentrating on managing and – in the best case – fostering creativity from a company’s point of view is the central point of this paper. When regarding the assumptions that the function of creativity consists in the relation between Expertise, Motivation and Originality (Amabile, 1988, 1996, 1997), the multinational personality and international experience of the expatriate leader mainly contributes to Originality and Expertise as such a person impacts on ‘creative characteristics’ in terms of ‘diversity’ and ‘procedural knowledge’. Starting with this causality, the question: ‘In how far does diversity in terms of the multinational personality and international experience of the expatriate leader enhance creative capability of the managed host- country’s team?’ will be answered. Nonetheless, MNCs might still be uncertain about in how far international assignments enhance the creativity ability of their international staff and which considerations they need to take into account in order to actually upgrade the overall organizational performance level. Decisions about when and how to employ the expatriate model, might overstrain some SIHRM managers of the MNC, as it is difficult to precisely and correctly evaluate strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the context of creativity when it comes to such intangible assets (creativity within Human Resources). Consequently, a code of practice, consisting of different frameworks, all established and verified by case studies which are based on qualitative market research, is introduced to give assistance. Each case will prove and strengthen one particular circumstance, representing the theoretical findings of this paper.