Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics – Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.7 (73), University of Hertfordshire, course: Leadership and Management Development, language: English, abstract: Anglo-French Wines Direct (AFW), a multinational company based in the UK, established a
‘High Flyers Programme’ four years ago to develop future leaders to enable to achieve its
global growth objectives. The aim was to send them to one of the international subsidiaries
for two years and bring them back for a more senior position. However, the new HR Director
of AFW has discovered the following problems within this programme:
1. 25 percent of the expatriates returned home early due to dissatisfaction.
2. Over 35 percent of the expatriates were considered to be underperforming on the
assignment.
3. Around 30 percent expatriates left within a year of their return to England.
In order to achieve its business objectives, it is essential that AFW turns round this failing
programme into a leading-edge leadership programme. Particularly since AFW is a large
company and plans to expand its business further, it is according to Burgoyne (1988, cited in
Gold et al., 2010) vital that the programme has a high level of maturity, i.e. complexity and
structure, enabling to meet the organisational needs and objectives. Thus, AFW needs to take
a strategic and integrative approach and manage each stage of the ‘International Assignment
Cycle’ (See Appendix 1), i.e. recruitment and selection, hiring, preparation, expatriation and
repatriation, effectively. Accordingly, this report aims to present a mix of solutions regarding
each stage and provide recommendations for evaluating the new programme to ensure its
effectiveness.