Abstract

This paper explores assigned expatriate managers’ diverse translation roles within the current multinational context, and how these roles support other expatriate functions. Increasing diversity has elevated the need for skilled global executives, who engage in knowledge transfer, management development, and coordination of MNCs’ global activities. Despite on-going changes worldwide, little has been written about how managers’ various roles are undertaken within the current business context, and whether new organisational and managerial priorities have emerged. Hence, I propose here that expatriate managers increasingly undertake varying translation roles within the current MNC context. I believe that managers will increasingly engage in the translation of language, policy, and culture and that such translation is intertwined with and support other expatriate roles.