Case Study Of Petronas

1.1 Background of the Research

1.1.1 Background of the Company

Petroliam Nasional Berhad or known as Petronas is a Malaysia’s National Petroleum Corporation wholly-owned by the Malaysian Government. Petronas was established in 17 August 1974 and is now ranked among the largest companies in the world with a proven track record in integrated oil and gas operations spanning the entire hydrocarbon value chain. Their vision is to become a “Leading Oil and Gas Multinational of Choice".

1.1.2 Background of the Study

In the last few decades, business has become gradually international. Many multinational companies send their personnel abroad to manage the operation in other host countries. Expatriates are necessary to guarantee that foreign subsidiary operations remain competitive (Lee & Sukoco, 2010). That is the reason why the global expatriate rates are increasing yearly. In the case of Malaysia, it has about 6.64 millions of outside labour force who worked in Malaysia as at January 2014 (Labour Force Statistics, Malaysia).

According to Tahir & Ismail (2007), Malaysia acknowledge the inflow of expatriates into the country to meet the demands for skilled and professional manpower. The findings shown that there are challenges for the expatriates when they go abroad. Thus, this study is actually to test the proposed model provided by Isakovic & Whitman (2013) with Petronas.

1.2 Problem Statement

Petronas has more than 40,000 employees and currently has sent more than 700 expatriates outside Malaysia, in 31 different countries (Human Resource, Petronas). To avoid from ineffective job performance as well as pre-mature return of the expatriates from happening, a research regarding the expatriates’ adjustment should be condu...

... middle of paper ...

...djustment.

H2. There is no different contribution among the three independent variables.

1.8 Definition of Terms

Expatriate Adjustment

Expatriate is employee who lives and work outside their home country. They are citizens of the country where the multinational corporation is headquartered (Luthans & Doh, 2012). Adjustment is sometimes referred to as adaptation, acculturation, or assimilation.

Culture Novelty

Culture novelty has been described as the cultural distance, or differences, as perceived by the expatriate regarding his or her own home culture and that of the host country (Church, 1982).

Previous Overseas Work Experience

It is when the expatriates have experiences worked in foreign country before this.

Foreign Language Ability

Foreign language ability is the ability of expatriate to speak, write and understand clearly the language of foreign country.