A Literature Review on Some Success Factors of Expatriate in

Indonesia for Supporting the Success

of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Siti Fatimah

, Eni Setyowati

, Triyono

, Muhammad Sholahuddin

Department of Development Economic, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta,

Indonesian

Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesian

Keywords: Success, professional worker, sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Abstract: Success is one of the goals to be achieved by every professional foreign worker in Indonesia. There are

several characteristics that must be possessed by every professional worker in supporting the success of

sustainable development goals (SDGs). Success means professional foreign workers successfully grant their

wishes, reach their targets or achieve their dreams in their career, at least with a salary that fulfill their

primary and secondary needs. Factors that determine the success of professional workers are Spirituality,

Biculturalism, Emotional Intelligence, Management Support, Family Support, Compensation, and

Professionalism. This paper will discuss some success factor of expatriates as a literature review on this

study in the Indonesian context.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Being a multinational (expatriate) professional

worker provided the opportunity to make bigger

money because of foreign exchange differences and

the salary standards are often higher than in the

worker’s home country, the job could also be a

golden bridge to pursue a better career. Meanwhile,

the challenge of working abroad is high risk and

failure rate.

Research on professional foreign workers in

Indonesia is relatively minimal when the sector has a

contribution that cannot be underestimated to the

development or investment of the country. Lisna

(2012) revealed that the contribution of Indonesian

migrant workers (TKI) is the second largest foreign

exchange after the oil and gas sector. Many foreign

workers achieve success, but not a few of them are

failed, not succeed yet or have failed before. Success

in this research means professional foreign workers

successfully grant their wishes, reach their targets or

achieve their dreams in their career, at least with

salary that fulfill their primary needs (clothing, food,

housing, education, security and health) and

secondary needs (e.g. housing facilities and adequate

personal transportation) for themselves and their

families properly with local standards. Given the

size of the contribution of foreign workers in

Indonesia, it is highly relevant that foreign workers

should be facilitated by preparing a model blueprint

of policy to support a better success for the

development of the country.

This study aims to find out the characteristics

and key success of foreign workers in Indonesia in

supporting the SDGs through in-depth interviews to

foreign expatriates in Indonesia, literature review of

the Law, previous research and expert opinion until

the concept of model design is found. This paper

discusses the literature review underlying the

research in the Indonesian context.

2 METHODS

Literature study is a written summary of articles

from journals, books, and other documents

describing both past and current theories and

information, organizing libraries into topics and

documents needed for the research. In the research,

researchers usually emphasize literature studies

Fatimah, S., Setyowati, E., Triyono, . and Sholahuddin, M.

A Literature Review on Some Success Factors of Expatriate in Indonesia for Supporting the Success of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

DOI: 10.5220/0008786502010203

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Conference on Economics and Business (IRCEB 2018), pages 201-203

ISBN: 978-989-758-428-2

201

taken from articles in journals. However, researchers

also need other information taken from conference

papers, books and government documents.

According to Creswell, the stages of conducting

literature review are as follows: (1) Identifying key

terms; (2) Locate literature in accordance with topics

that have been found from the database or the

internet; (3) Arranging the selected literature

(organizing the literature); (4) Writing a Literature

Review.

3 RESULTS

Based on the literature review, there are several

factors that determine the success of professional

workers abroad. Some of these factors are

Spirituality, Biculturalism, Emotional Intelligence,

Management Support, Family Support,

Compensation and Professionalism.

Luke Wood J., Hilton in their research have

found that spirituality has a positive impact on

academic success. Spirituality shows a positive

effect when it is applied to a person, but when

spirituality is applied in the work environment, it

will face many challenges and opposition especially

when the work environment adheres pluralism.

Things that should not be ignored in working

abroad are cultural factors. Defines biculturalism as

the internalization of both the worker's original

culture and the local culture. With the ability to

combine the two non-conflicting cultures, they will

gain sympathy and support from their superiors and

local workers. The synonym of biculturalism is a

cross-cultural adjustment. In the Indonesian context,

its factors are Cultural Intelligence and Language

Ability. Cultural Intelligence means the ability of

expatriate in the adaptation of unfamiliar culture.

Some researches proof a significant impact of

Cultural Intelligence on cross-cultural adjustment.

Understanding Cultural Intelligence and language

ability have an important impact on the expatriates

performing in multicultural environments.

In its development found five emotional

intelligence factors consisting of self-awareness (the

state when we make ourselves aware of the emotions

we are experiencing and also our thoughts about the

emotions), the ability to manage emotions, the

ability to motivate ourselves, good social

relationships and the ability to direct emotions.

Research by Mol, Born, Williamson and Vander

Molen was able to predict worker performance

based on emotional intelligence. Thus, emotional

intelligence is assumed to be one of the success

factors of multinational workers.

Another success factor of multinational workers

is management support. Selmer pointed out that the

interaction between superiors and subordinates can

create an environment that motivates and retains

employees to stay on the side of management, in

addition to compensation. In the Indonesian context,

it is namely organizational support. Organizations

financial support is very important in adjustment and

that of the expatriate family in Indonesia such as to

buy fresh food, the ability to get medical treatment

including international insurance like going to the

hospital and their accompanying spouse, and

transportation for going back to home.

Compensation and family roles are included as

factors supporting the success of multinational

workers. Do not let workers experience home-sick

often, because it will interfere with their

performance. Competitive compensation packages

should be available for those with a good reputation

so that workers and their families feel comfortable

and support them in their duties.

The last factor is professionalism, Sveiby defined

a professional as someone who is able to plan,

execute and show a result based on client request.

While the competence refers to people who are

working in the field of expertise based on the

knowledge and skills they have.

Templer examined the personal attributes of

expatriate managers and the success of expatriates.

The results show that subordinate perceptions of all

attributes (knowledge, rational leadership skill,

cultural openness, and adaptation) are equally

important and all personal attributes are positively

related to most success criteria. Nevertheless,

rational leadership skill is the most important

personal attribute and success factor for the

performance of expatriate manager unit

performance. The ethnocentric subordinate has a

negative relationship to expatriate work adjustment.

Alizee B. Avril examined what factors are

required to improve the success of professional

workers abroad in multinational companies in the

field of hospitality. The results of this study indicate

that several factors such as family status, emotional

intelligence, exercise habits, and learning orientation

are required to improve the success of professional

workers abroad.

Barakat, Areeg and Moussa found some

variables that affect the learning of expatriates and

organizations. This study resulted in a framework of

a positive relationship between expatriate

international duty and its learning and a positive

IRCEB 2018 - 2nd INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE ON ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS 2018

202

relationship between expatriate learning and

organizational learning.

4 CONCLUSION

Multinational enterprises have a significant role in

the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) success.

Those multinational companies used more than a

half of their senior management team who were

expatriates. Thus, The role of professional foreign

workers in Indonesia is crucial in supporting the

development of SDGs in various forms of

characteristics. Foreign workers want to achieve

success in the place where they work, and each of

them has his/her own way to reach that level of

success. Adaptation to the local environment with

different culture and language is a must for every

foreign worker, this is one of the skills to achieve

success because not everyone can adapt well.

Besides, Spirituality, Emotional Intelligence,

Management Support, Family Support,

Compensation, and Professionalism are factors

affecting the expatriate's success in Indonesia.

The implication of this literature research is a

model design is required for the success of

professional foreign workers in helping the

realization of SDGs by familiarizing them to the

relevant agencies in the Indonesian context.

Hopefully, in the future, the researcher could find

the possibility of implementation of the success

model of Expatriate in Indonesia for Indonesian

professional worker in the world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to extend our gratitude to the

Ministry of Higher Education of Republic Indonesia

and Center for Research and Community Service of

Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta for funding

this research. We also offer our sincere gratitude to

our team (Iwan, Helmi, Ida, Ifka and Agustin) for

their assistance in this research.

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A Literature Review on Some Success Factors of Expatriate in Indonesia for Supporting the Success of Sustainable Development Goals

(SDGs)

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