Using expatriates to staff a new foreign subsidiary provides a parent firm with several advantages. First, expatriates can serve as a transfer mechanism for knowledge, skills, and competencies of the parent firm (Cohen and Levinthal 1990; Downes and Thomas 2000; Subramaniam and Venkatraman 2001). Second, there may be a lack of qualified local talent and/or skilled multinational firms may have a large pool of mobile expatriate talent (Kobrin 1988; Edstrom and Galbraith 1994). Third, expatriates represent a worldwide resource that can easily be reassigned or transferred to where their managerial skills are needed. Finally, expatriates may allow for greater subsidiary control by and communication with the parent company (Egelhoff 1984; Boyacigiller 1990).