 We are discussing international human resource management issues of SMEs and in this topic We are going to particularly talk about expatriate management You know that expatriates are people who you send from your own country to a foreign country and they work in the foreign country in your organization Which you are trying to extend in the internationalization process Now issues in SMEs regarding expatriate management is that it is taken comparatively informally as compared to the multinational as we have already discussed that SMEs they have lesser resources their structures are less formal They are trading programs are less formal and all the functions of human resources are taken less formally and similarly expatriate management is also taken less formally in the SMEs a research on 449 SMEs in Germany it showed that expatriate management it usually occurred in joint ventures or wholly owned foreign subsidiaries or sometimes it also occurred in Licensing agreements so where there was a joint venture in which two firms from different countries came together And they were small they were SMEs they went for expatriate management or if They were wholly owned foreign subsidiaries that an SME it Ho it owns a foreign subsidiary completely over their expatriate management was done more formally or Sometimes in licensing agreements in which you provide license to Use your Your patent or your copyright or your logo or your firm's name in that particular instance The organizations they go for expatriate management because they want to keep the name of their organization Intact and protect it so they go for expatriate management These firms they indicated that International recruitment of Internet internal employees, which is expatriate management was the second most important Decision issue considered to be taken in in the recruitment the first most important recruitment issue was recruitment of people within that local market in which that SME was trying to enter in the International market. This is the second most important decision issue firms indicated that 16 from 16 person firms they send employees for International assignments for career development purposes. So even in the SMEs 16 person firms They believed that career development of the international Exposure is important and therefore they sent their own people for Learning in the international In the international market and that is something which is an aspect of expatriate management Then in SMEs The expatriate management training was mostly Predominated with giving the language skills Cross-cultural training, which is a very important aspect of expatriate management in multinationals it took a backseat in SMEs because it is something which is more time-consuming more costly and then you can leave it to your own Learning as well. Whereas language is something which people who are entering An international market and entering a foreign country. They really need to learn you cannot Survive without learning that manage that language skills So more focus was given on learning language skills than giving Cross-cultural training and where cross-cultural training was actually given to these people In SMEs it was outsourced rather than given in-house because in-house training is really expensive and SMEs They cannot afford it. So that is why it was outsourced whenever it was given to people in SMEs and therefore because of these training and learning issues because of an informal structure and culture of expatriate management in SMEs Cross-cultural integration it remains a major issue for SMEs So this is an important aspect of human resource management in SMEs