(Re) Configuração das identidades de executivos de empresas multinacionais: múltiplas dimensões durante a expatriação

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is to emphasize the essentially human aspects ignored by the mainstream literature of IHRM, such as the identity transformations resulting from international mobility. In that way, this study presents theoretical and empirical contributions in order to understand how the experiences of Brazilian expatriate executives of Multinational companies (re)configure their identities as a result of international mobility. For that, it adopted the qualitative research, with analytical-descriptive orientation, in primary and secondary data. Data collection was made by semi-structured interviews with twenty-one Brazilian expatriate executives working at multinational companies (MNCs). The results showed the multidimensional nature of identity, as well as its reconfiguration in an international context, in that the values, attitudes and behaviors have been affected. Additionally, expatriation proved to be a contradictory process of losses and gains, challenges and learnings, disruption and continuous reconfiguration, where human problems of intercultural adaptation are ignored by MNEs. As a result, it was verified the (re)configuration of the identities of the expatriate. In some cases, it was noticeable the neoliberal subject with all the load of managerial values that preach individualism and consider the expatriation as the apex of his professional trajectory. In other cases, it is manifested the "human", that is invisible in literature, as well as commoditized. Sometimes, revealing his subjectivity with the force of only one word: foreigner. Besides that, in other cases, the "open" human is manifested, whom can open him/herself to the new to the strangers in such a way that he/she can "be with the other" in a process of authentic exchange (interculturality), and he/she also considers the possibility of "knowing the world in a different way" by the five senses. This was the case of Brazilian expatriate executives who described knowing the world by the sounds, tastes, smells, textures, visual, and could understand each other as human. The difference, in fact, is essentially human.