With the ethnocentric type, foreign markets remain for the corporation primarily a continuation of the domestic market of the parent company’s home country. The distinctive features of this type of corporation are the high centralization of decision-making and strong control over the activities of foreign branches by the parent company. Similar to the ethnocentric type, the geocentric type is characterized by high market importance (Drachal, 2014). However, in this approach, it is the external rather than the internal market that increases in importance.
With the regiocentric approach, as with geocentric, the external market is also important, but it is no longer necessary to focus on the markets of individual countries. This approach takes the attention to the regions, for example, to the whole of Western Europe, and not to France or the UK. Polycentric staffing approach resembles the ethnocentric model (Sherry, 2021). However, unlike within the ethnocentric approach, foreign branches are dominated by local managers, and the branches themselves are autonomous.
When planning for a major international expansion, I would choose the geocentric staffing approach. In my opinion, this model is most suitable for global corporations, since the arena of activity of a geocentric multinational company is the whole world. This is due to the fact that this approach makes it possible to integrate together the activities carried out in different countries. The primary reasons for expat failure may be the presence of serious cultural and language barriers. To mitigate these factors, I would put special pre-assignment training for expats into place. First of all, these would be mandatory language classes, which would be devoted to the study of both professional words and slang words for communication with other colleagues. Also, in these classes, expats would be taught the culture of behavior of the country to which they moved to facilitate their integration into the team.
References
Drachal, K. (2014). What do we know from EPRG model? Ecoforum, 3(2), 85–92.
Sherry, A. (2021). Management styles of multinational corporations and PepsiCo orientation in the Lebanese market. Management Studies and Economic Systems, 6(3), 101–107.
