Mentoring African American Expatriates: Providing The Bridge To Success Abroad

Abstract

Employment predictions continue to forecast increasing racial diversity in the American workforce as firms face global competition and strive to grasp the challenges of a global business landscape. As American multinational corporations use expatriate assignments; supplemented by flexipatriates and inpatriates to meet customer preferences in the global marketplace, growing racial diversity may generate more expatriates of color. Global human resource management research has focused on issues such as adjustment and cross-cultural development and recently mentoring as critical factors for expatriate success. A growing body of mentoring research details the career experiences of employees with diverse backgrounds, yet few studies center on the experiences of the African American expatriate. This article aims to examine African Americans mentoring opportunities in a global environment, with a focus on understanding the role mentoring plays for this particular population group. This work is intended to contribute to the increasing literature on global mentoring and will help to influence the thinking of multinational corporations’ response to the increasing diversity of their global workforce.