All Pain, Little Gain? Reframing the Value of International Assignments

It has long been recognised that international assignments play an important strategicrole in a company's portfolio of global staffing options. However, there has beenlimited work that demonstrates how companies measure their return on investment(ROI) from international assignments. In this article, we present the results of atwo-country study of nine multinational companies that questions the use of measuressuch as return-on-investment (ROI). Rather, we reframe how international assignmentsare considered and contend that the concept of intellectual capital best captures the trueworth ' to organisations and individuals ' of international assignments.