 We are talking about performance management of expatriates and we discussed that in order to manage the performance of these people we need to understand their tasks, their assignments and their roles. So in this topic we are going to talk about the aspect of role conception. So for that we first need to know what a role is. A role is the organized set of behaviors that are assigned to a particular position. So in a particular position a person may need to perform a particular set of behaviors and those set of behaviors may need that person to perform various different roles. So for example in a family a person is a father, a person is a brother, a person is a son. The same person is performing various different roles in different capacities. So similarly a person who is appointed in an organization is performing various different roles in the particular position and for performing those roles that person has to exhibit a set of predetermined behaviors which are required to be performed in that role. So if you are performing in the role of a subsidiary manager that would be a different set of behaviors. In the same position when you are a subordinate to the parent country headquarter then you would have to show a different set of behaviors. When you are working in as a peer, as a colleague, as a person who is at the same level in the organization you would have to show different types of behaviors. Similarly you would have to show the behaviors according to the functions of management. So at various different times you would have to be organizing. At times you would have to be planning. At times you would have to be controlling. At times you would have to be leading. So the different sets of behaviors which are required to perform a particular position are the roles which you have to exhibit. Although an individual may affect how a role is interpreted and performed, the role itself is predetermined. So it is a process of perception from the organization side as well as from the individual side. The organization ascends the role expectations. The individual receives the role expectations and it is a combination of how these perceptions they are negotiated. That is something which is affected by a number of factors. It could be the attitudes, it could be the personality of the person, it could be the expertise and experience of that person and a number of things how a person interprets the role that he or she has to perform. But the role which has to be performed is definitely predetermined by the organization what the organization expects to see, what type of behaviors they expect to see in the person performing those particular roles. So there are two types of entities in this process of role conception. One is the role recipient, the person who receives the expectations of the behaviors which have to be performed, that is the expatriate, that is the person who is sent on the international assignment. He perceives, he or she perceives what type of role has to be performed. And then the parent company which is the role sender. So the role sender sends the role expectations to the expatriate that this is the type of roles that we expect you to perform. So the role recipient is the expatriate and then the role senders could be the parent company as well as the role senders could be the host country stakeholders as well. So parent company expects you to exhibit certain kind of roles which are sent by the parent country and parent company. But when you go and work in another environment you know that in that environment there are a number of people who are the stakeholders in the host country. So those people also expect you to perform in a particular way. So the people who are stakeholders in the host country environment they are the, first of all the subsidiary employees, then the host government officials, the customers as well as the suppliers. So you need to behave, you need to use a particular set of behaviors to manage the role expectations of people who are expecting you to perform from the parent company as well as the host country stakeholders. So you can see from this that there could be problem in this role conception process. Why? Because in international assignments role is defined in one country and performed in another country. So there is a cultural barrier between the, between where the role is defined and where it is performed. If the role is defined in for example America, the United States and that is being performed for example in a developing country like Mexico as we talked about the example of Mexico and American work standards that in America people work, the average output of a person is double than that of a Mexican manager. So if the role is expected it is perceived, the role expectations are defined in America and then the role is being performed in a country where job activity or average output is much lower than America then there would definitely be a role conflict. And then because there are multiple role senders, one are the people who are from the parent company, parent country and then there are host country stakeholders, host country employees, customer, suppliers, government officials who expect the person to behave in a particular way. So those people who are, who they have their own expectations and the parent company higher ups they have their own expectations. So when these expectations they clash there could be a role conflict. So for example if the parent country wants you to be highly performance oriented whereas the culture of the subsidiary country is that of a relaxed situation of not being that performance oriented then the role expectations from both the two sides are going to clash with each other and therefore lead to a role conflict. So there could be problems in role conception in this particular situation. The factors which affect role conception process, there are various different factors which affect this role conception process. Number one is the commitment to the parent country. The more you are committed to the parent country the more involved you would be with the role expectation of the parent country and therefore you would be concerned about replicating the roles which are expected by you from the parent country. So you would be thinking in a one direction in a unidirection and not be more responsive to the role expectations and therefore the role conception would be clear. It's not that it would be effective but the role conception process if you are committed to your parent country you will be unidirectional in achieving the targets of your own parent country and replicating the role expectation of the parent country. Then role clarity is also something which affects how the role is conceived, how clearly the role is defined, the job is defined, the expected behaviors they are defined by the organization if there is role clarity in that the role conception process will be clear. And then finally the work adjustment process of a person who is adjusting to the new roles, the how well that person is able to adjust to that work situation that is also going to affect the role conception process. So when we look at the parent country nationals role conception process it is different from the third country nationals and home country nationals. At the parent country national level the parent country national who is sent from a parent country to the host country the role conception process is you can see from the diagram that the multinational is the role sender which communicates the role expectation to the parent country national manager which is the role recipient. And you can see that there is no cultural boundary between the multinational and the parent country national manager. So you can see a direct arrow from the MNE to the PCN manager. The PCN manager then according to that role expectations then parent country national manager shows the role behaviors which are expected from that person. But there are also you can see that there are dotted line from the host country stakeholders who are also the role senders but because it crosses a cultural boundary therefore the role sending and role receiving process may be a little bit difficult. And then finally are the PCN manager role behavior which is affecting the host country stakeholders who are the role senders. So this is the process of parent country national role conception. Now the third country national role conception is a little bit more complicated. So you can see that the parent company is the role sender but there is a cultural boundary between the parent company and the third country national manager who is the role recipient and the rest of the process are similar to the parent country national role conception process but there there are basically two cultural boundaries. Number one is from the parent company to the PCN manager and the second one is between the PCN manager and the host country stakeholders. So this becomes a little bit more complicated. So accordingly the person who is being evaluated for performance that needs to be made sure that the role conception process is smooth. The role conception process is taken care of and therefore the performance management is going to be affected by these role conception process. The more role conception is clear it is smooth it is less complicated the more easier it would be to determine the performance of people who are performing these roles.