Shantaram Software Limited (SSL) is a fast-growing software company in India. It defines, designs, and delivers technology-enabled business solutions to its clients. It has a global presence through strategic alliances with leading technology providers located in different parts of the world. In fact, it conducts its global operations through its 22 overseas offices located in countries including the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, China, Poland, South Africa, the Philippines, Argentina, and Peru. The company has 15,000 employees, of which 3200 are expatriates, on international assignments at any given time. SSL has an international HR division as part of the HR department that prepares, trains, expatriates, and repatriates employees selected for international assignments. The HR department of this company is managed by Mr. H. Kumar, director (HR). The International Human Resource (IHR) division, headed by Mr. Dev Patel, is responsible for identifying, orienting, training, and compensating the expatriate employees. It is also responsible for evaluating the performance of the expatriates on overseas assignments. Since SSL gets a sizeable portion of its income from overseas ventures, it has spent a considerable amount of time and resources in developing a global HR system. Yet, the SSL international division faces specific problems like high employee attrition among expatriates and a high cost of maintaining them on international assignments. Further, an employee satisfaction survey conducted among the expatriates revealed employee dissatisfaction over performance evaluation and pay differentials. Some of the expatriates complained that the IHR division was ignoring the dissimilarity in the expatriate assignments and foreign situation constraints while evaluating the performance of the expatriate employees in the same positions but posted to different countries. As such, the international performance management tools had failed to recognize the country-or-region-specific difficulties in job performance. Another major problem associated with the expatriate assignment is the high cost of maintaining expatriates in overseas positions. SSL had already estimated the cost of using local employees rather than expatriates. The management team also felt that the expatriates often overemphasized short-term results rather than the necessary long-term strategies and objectives since they were aware that they would only be working in their assignment for a few years. The management sought the input of the HR department about the expatriate problems and instructed it to develop strategies to overcome them. The HR department forwarded the letter to the IHR division for its views and responses. Mr. Patel, in his reply, defended both the performance evaluation system for expatriates and the practice of deploying parent-country employees rather than local employees. Regarding performance evaluation, Patel maintained that a cross-section of the employees, including expatriates, was consulted while designing the international performance standards and evaluation techniques. Thus, the international performance management system was presumed to be objective and comprehensive. Regarding the high costs associated with the expatriate employees, he wanted the present system to continue despite managerial vacancies. According to him, the expatriate system enabled the company to have a better and more direct control over the foreign branches. When his response was reviewed by the management team, there was a sense of disappointment among the top managers because IHRs response did not offer any concrete solutions. Understandably, the management team was seriously pondering its next move.

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