Beginning of article  The Key to Expatriate Success  Up to 40
percent of U.S. "expatriate" managers fail in their overseas
assignments. The missing link is preparation. Here are some
guidelines for success.  Overseas operations are big business
for multinational corporations, or MNCs. In one recent year,
Exxon, America's largest MNC, produced overseas sales
representing 72 percent of the company's total revenue and
almost 75 percent of its total profit. Given the revenue at
stake, it is to any company's advantage to staff overseas
foreign divisions with effective expatriate managers.
Unfortunately, many companies do not realize the potential
bottom-line impact of expatriate success and fall short in their
efforts to prepare expatriates for their assignments. Overseas
assignments are notorious for their high failure rate. An
article in the Academy of Management Review estimated that from
1965 to 1985, the expatriate failure rate fluctuated between 25
percent and 40 percent, with an average cost per failure to