Knowledge Benefits of Social Capital upon Repatriation: A Longitudinal Study of International Assignees

This study integrates social resources theory and social exchange theory arguments to examine the knowledge benefits that international assignees' host‐unit social capital entails upon repatriation. Specifically, I hypothesize that assignees' host‐unit social capital, operationalized as their number of work group contacts and their proportion of trusted ties at the host unit, positively relates to two specific knowledge benefits upon repatriation: continued access to host‐unit knowledge; and continued transfer of host‐unit knowledge to colleagues in assignees' new positions. Assignees' perceptions of career and repatriation support are expected to moderate these relationships. The hypotheses are tested with a longitudinal sample of 85 inpatriate assignees in 10 German multinationals. I contribute to the literatures on international assignments, social capital, and MNC knowledge flows by explaining how and under what conditions assignees' host‐unit social capital entails knowledge benefits upon repatriation.     

Not all expatriates are the same: non-traditional South Korean expatriates in China

Non-traditional expatriates, those expatriates whose assignments tend to be shorter, involve specialist work and often do not involve families relocating, have not been the subject of sustained research. What we do know about this group of expatriates has been mainly derived from research on Western multinational enterprises (MNEs). The current study explores the trend towards, and the management of, these non-traditional expatriates in South Korean MNEs operating in China. Using a qualitative case study approach involving in-depth, semi-structured interviews with expatriates and local managers, this study reveals that the use of non-traditional expatriates has been on rise in the sample MNEs and that they undertake similar roles to the long-term expatriates including control, problem-solving, management development and knowledge transfer. This shift towards non-traditional expatriation has been brought about by the decreased need for long-term assignments and the desire to gain more organizational flexibility. We conclude that such changes represent a strategic response to the longer term issues surrounding traditional expatriates such as family, career and expatriate failure. Such a shift is not without problems as the research found that there was a lack of formal recruitment and selection processes and that training for non-traditional expatriates was limited.     

Emerging issues and challenges in global staffing: a North American perspective

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) recognize that human resources play an important role in gaining a competitive advantage in today's highly competitive global business environment. While all aspects of managing human resources are important, staffing, continues to be an essential IHRM activity that helps MNEs in their need for coordination and control across widely dispersed units. As such, researchers and practitioners alike are interested in addressing the key issues and challenges in staffing the several types of employees that comprise the global or multinational workforce. We focus on three issues that have emerged in recent years regarding how MNEs staff their multinational workforce including: 1) managing different types of employee groups; 2) selection and management of employees posted to international assignments; and, 3) receptivity to international careers among early career individuals. We review these and then describe an empirical study conducted on the third issue.     

International recruitment and selection practices of South Korean multinationals in China

South Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs) have developed rapidly since the late 1950s. However, there is little research on, and hence little is known about, how South Korean MNEs manage human resources in overseas operations. To fill this gap, in the literature the current study investigates South Korean MNEs' international recruitment and selection policies and practices in their Chinese operations. It reveals that South Korean MNEs tend to adopt the polycentric approach or a mixed approach of being polycentric and ethnocentric to international staffing, with the number of expatriates dropping gradually over time. South Korean MNEs adopt ‘one-way selection’ in recruiting and selecting expatriates, and localise recruitment procedures and selection criteria for host-country nationals. South Korean MNEs have paid inadequate attention to: first, expatriates' career development; and second, personal and family issues emerging from expatriation and repatriation.     

Flexible global working arrangements: An integrative review and future research agenda

The topography of global mobility within multinational enterprises (MNEs) is evolving where we now have a portfolio of flexible global working arrangements (FGWAs) including: international business travellers, flexpatriates, short-term international assignees, international commuters, and rotational assignees. The need for more agile structures and more efficient mechanisms to transfer globally dispersed knowledge are two key enablers in this evolution. With increased interest, this paper offers the first systematic, integrative review of 100 articles on FGWAs. The review indicates that these forms of global work appear to be a somewhat overlooked double-edged sword in that they may confer significant but unrealised value for MNEs alongside hidden, adverse consequences for individuals. Notable was the lack of insight into the HR function's input or oversight at either a strategic or operational level. We find that there is a distinct lack of strategic linkages to global mobility and/or HR functions. We propose a research agenda that centres on better understanding the international HR function's role and responsibility in providing a more strategic and sustainable perspective of these increasingly common FGWAs alongside virtual work. The COVID-19 pandemic may offer a critical juncture point in which there is greater strategic consideration on the utilisation and support of such arrangements.     

The Foundations of International Business: Cross‐Border Investment Activity and the Balance between Market‐Power and Efficiency Effects

The foundational international business (IB) scholarship grappled with whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) are largely efficiency‐enhancing or market‐power inducing institutions. Contemporary scholarship, however, often associates foreign direct investment (FDI) with efficiency‐enhancing properties and thus neglects the market‐power interpretation of the MNE. Such an imbalance is problematic given that the theoretical and empirical justifications behind the field's embrace of the efficiency interpretation are not fully evident. Instead, both efficiency and market‐power effects are seemingly present in cross‐border investment activity. Based on a comprehensive sample of up to 4,361 cross‐border investments materializing between 1986 and 2010, we present theoretically‐grounded hypotheses with regard to when market‐power effects will tend to dominate efficiency effects. We find that cross‐border investments undertaken by emerging‐market MNEs in both developed and emerging markets tend to involve substantial efficiency effects and minimal market‐power effects when compared with the cross‐border investments undertaken by developed‐country MNEs in both developed and emerging markets.     

Expatriates' families: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The influence of family on expatriates and their families' international assignments experience have been long discussed in various disciplines. We undertake a systematic review of 151 articles on expatriates' families published between 2006 and 2020 in peer-reviewed academic journals in Business and Management, Medicine, Psychology, and Decision Sciences. Adopting a step-wise approach to conduct the review and using Leximancer, we analyze the literature and categorize it into five major themes: family's influence on expatriates; expatriation's influence on expatriate families; family and individual adjustment in the expatriation process; organizational practices concerning family issues in expatriation; and expatriate families' social interaction. This mapping, thematizing and systematic organizing of the literature allows us to identify research areas that have been overpopulated and others that have not received sufficient scholarly attention. By doing so, this study contributes to the literature by providing a multidisciplinary perspective on the issue of expatriates' families. We also present a research agenda to advance knowledge in the field and make recommendations for practice.     

Extrinsic motivation as a determinant of knowledge exchange in sales teams: A social network approach

This paper investigates extrinsic motivation as a determinant of knowledge exchange among employees in sales teams. Applying a social network approach, we study different forms of knowledge-exchange behaviors from the perspective of a focal employee and from the perspective of the dyad. From the focal employees' perspective, we disentangle knowledge seeking from knowledge providing, and argue that these two behaviors are affected differently by employees' extrinsic motivation. From the dyad perspective, we take similarity in motivation of tied-to employees and reciprocity of exchange ties into account. To test our hypotheses, we apply exponential random graph models to data gathered from 138 employees in five different sales teams distributed across three companies in Central Europe. The results of our analysis from the focal employees' perspective show that extrinsically motivated employees generally engage in less knowledge exchange. The dyad perspective further highlights that sales employees proceed purposefully when they exchange knowledge with coworkers. For instance, two employees' relative levels of extrinsic motivation determine their willingness to engage in reciprocal knowledge exchange. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on the microfoundations of organizational knowledge management and draw conclusions concerning HRM practices used to foster extrinsic motivation, thereby affecting knowledge exchange.     

The family in the center of international assignments: a systematic review and future research agenda

Over the past 30 years, the number of studies investigating the family interface of international assignments has risen substantially. While alternative forms of international assignments have been gaining importance, this article focuses specifically on the family interface of traditional organization assigned expatriation as the most prominent and most researched form of global work. Thus far, research has investigated a broad array of topics ranging from the family’s willingness to relocate over family adjustment to work-family balance and utilized a large variety of theoretical foundations. Given this variety in the literature, the field is fragmented and lacks a consistent theoretical argumentation. As a first step to provide some organization, we synthesize the family expatriation literature by developing a comprehensive multi-level framework of the determinants and dimensions of family outcomes. To achieve this objective, we critically assess publications between 1985 and 2017 in peer-viewed international journals, examine theoretical foundations and review the extant literature based on our framework. With this we uncover similarities and inconsistencies in the field, which allows us to deduce an agenda for future research and offer recommendations for practice.     

Multinational Firm Knowledge,Use of Expatriates,and Foreign Subsidiary Performance

The impact of knowledge transfer on foreign subsidiary performance has been a major focus of research on knowledge management in multinational enterprises (MNEs). By integrating the knowledge‐based view and the expatriation literature, this study examines the relationship between a multinational firm's knowledge (i.e. marketing and technological knowledge), its use of expatriates, and the performance of its foreign subsidiaries. We conceptualize that expatriates play a contingent role in facilitating the transfer and redeployment of a parent firm's knowledge to its subsidiary, depending on the location specificity of the organizational knowledge being transferred and the time of transfer. Our analysis of 1660 foreign subsidiaries of Japanese firms over a 15‐year period indicates that the number of expatriates relative to the total number of subsidiary employees (1) strengthened the effect of a parent firm's technological knowledge (with low location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the short term, but (2) weakened the impact of the parent firm's marketing knowledge (with high location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the long term. We also found that the expatriates' influence on knowledge transfer eventually disappeared. The implications for knowledge transfer research and the expatriate management literature are discussed.     

Conditional altruism: Effects of HRM practices on the willingness of host‐country nationals to help expatriates

The assistance of host‐country nationals (HCNs) both within the workplace and in the external environment plays a significant role in expatriate adjustment and work performance on international assignments. Extant research exploring antecedents of HCNs' attitudes and behaviors toward expatriates focuses on personal and intrapersonal factors but overlooks organizational contextual effects. In this study, we propose and test a model that HCNs' willingness to help expatriates is influenced by HRM practices in international subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Results of analyzing data collected from Chinese subsidiaries of South Korean MNEs showed that high‐commitment HRM practices directly and indirectly influence HCNs' willingness to help expatriates through the mediation of perceived organizational support (POS). Socially responsible HRM indirectly influences the criterion variable through the mediation of organizational identification. Moreover, POS and organizational identification sequentially mediate the effect of high‐commitment HRM on HCNs' willingness to help expatriates. These findings shed some light on organizational antecedents that go beyond personal and intrapersonal factors of HCN attitudes and behavior toward expatriates.     

Capital gains: expatriate adjustment and the psychological contract in international careers

This paper argues that the notion of adjustment to careers involving international assignments needs to be developed further than the current literature reflects. An expatriate assignment is an expatriate's opportunity to build career capital and a company's opportunity to generate social and intellectual capital. The extent of the capital gains will depend considerably on the expatriate's adjustment during and after the assignment, which is influenced by the psychological contract. We argue that our understanding of the career impact of expatriation will be enhanced by a more refined picture of the adjustment that expatriates experience during the assignment and during repatriation. In particular, we examine adjustment as process rather than as event. We propose a broad conception of expatriate adjustment and its link to careers. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The ‘expat factor’: the influence of working time on women's decisions to undertake international assignments in the oil and gas industry

This article examines the effect of working time on women's willingness to go on expatriate assignments in the oil and gas exploration and production sector. The research draws upon an analysis of two case study firms' international assignment and working time policies, semi-structured interviews with 14 human resource staff responsible for policy design and implementation, and a survey of the views of 71 women expatriates, supported by in-depth interviews with 26 of the survey respondents. The research identifies an ‘expat factor’: assignees state that long hours are inherent in expatriation and necessary to further their careers. However, in practice, working time is not excessive and flexible working practices are utilised. Hours of work have little effect on women's decisions to undertake long-term assignments but alternatives such as short-term and commuter assignments are unpopular as their working patterns are disruptive to family life. This article contributes to theory development by linking two discrete frameworks that explain women's career choices when they strive to balance their career goals with their families and by identifying a career compromise threshold when expatriation is rejected in favour of family considerations. A model is proposed to link working time/patterns to women's international assignment participation.     

Working in the Middle East: Western female expatriates' experiences in the United Arab Emirates

This study is about the experiences of Western female expatriates working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Muslim Arab country in the Middle East. We reveal these expatriates' own interpretations of their adjustment, cross-cultural training (CCT) and social ties and support experiences. On the basis of a survey of 86 female expatriates from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA and subsequent interviews with 26 of them, we find that Western women successfully adjust to life and work in the UAE despite significant cultural differences between their home countries and the UAE. Surprisingly, Western female expatriates do not find lengthy rigorous CCT critical to their assignments in this country. They see such training as an unjustified cost due to the fact that they rarely interact with host nationals and are much more frequently exposed to other Westerners and representatives of other cultures while undertaking their assignments. The large Western expatriate community is highly appreciated as the primary source of social ties and support for our respondents, whereas interacting with host country nationals is rather an exception and does not provide essential ties and support. Our findings have implications for multinational companies (MNCs) operating via expatriation in the UAE and for Western female expatriates who consider this country as their assignment destination.     

Lesbian and gay expatriation: opportunities,barriers and challenges for global mobility

The research presented in this paper addresses an important gap in the expatriation literature in examining perceptions of opportunities, barriers and challenges for expatriation of lesbian and gay (LG) expatriates. This is an area that is under-researched despite such individuals representing a growing sector of the global talent pool. Based on an analysis of interviews with 20 LG expatriates, the study draws on social capital theory as a lens for highlighting LG expatriates' unique attributes and networks. The research is significant in suggesting that the expatriates' sexual minority status is viewed as both a disabler and enabler in expatriation. We suggest that there is a corporate ceiling for LG expatriates, and that they experience discrimination and stereotyping, and oftentimes limited organizational and host-country support. Significantly, the findings also extend research in suggesting that LG workers may have more opportunities in global staffing than previously thought and a valuable role in contributing to inclusivity debates and policy development on the global business stage. Furthermore, LG expatriates may be accepted in host countries when homosexuality is deemed legally or socially unacceptable for locals, and legal and financial independence within LG partnerships may provide them with more mobility than their heterosexual counterparts.     

The impact of cultural dimensions on Chinese expatriates' career capital

The existing expatriation literature confirms that international assignments (IAs) are an essential tool for developing international talent and global managers. However, the majority of relevant studies are conducted in Western developed contexts and neglect the effects on individuals from emerging countries such as China. In the Chinese multinational companies context, this paper explores the concept of career capital comprising knowing-how, knowing-whom and knowing-why. Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions, it investigates the impact of IAs on an individual's career capital. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews with Chinese expatriates were conducted. Results suggest that the Chinese expatriates develop limited career capital from IAs. The research shows that the Chinese culture plays an important role in shaping organisational practices and individual behaviours and, consequently, the development of expatriates' career capital. It goes beyond the current individual and organisational focuses on IAs to include a cultural perspective on the development of career capital. Implications are rehearsed, exposing areas for further research.     

Fostering expatriate success: A meta-analysis of the differential benefits of social support

While social support is recognized as an important factor for successful international assignment, there is, to date, no overview of the supportive agents during the expatriation process and their influence on different criteria of expatriate success. We culminate findings of 84 independent studies that examined the social support provided by community-, work-, and family-domain agents in relation to four criteria of expatriate success: adjustment, commitment, performance, and retention. We explore the role of social support proximity: the physical, cultural, or hierarchical distance between a supporting agent and the expatriate. Our meta-analysis demonstrates that the strength of the support-success relationship (ρ = .24 overall) depends on this supporting agent and the success criterion under study. We visualized the meta-analytical estimates of the different relationships between social support and success criteria using a force-directed graph, demonstrating that adjustment and performance criteria have similar relationships to social support, distinct from those of commitment or retention criteria. Implications for future research and practices that do or do not foster the success of expatriate assignments are discussed.     

Does the ‘non-traditional expatriate’ exist? A critical exploration of new expatriation categories

Non-Traditional Expatriates (NTEs) are rapidly increasing in the global talent pool, but remains a ‘black-box’ in the Expatriate Management and Global Mobility literatures. This article advances the conceptualisation of NTEs, due to the nascent research field is lacking construct clarity in terms of the meaning of the term as well as an operationalised conceptual framework. Five underlying assumptions in the scarce extant literature are identified and discussed, as a means to responding to the following research questions: (i) how credible is the NTE term as an expatriation typology?; and (ii) how can the conceptual framework of NTEs be operationalised? If these key issues remain unsolved, there is a risk of establishing flawed research design which can negatively affect researchers’ credibility when providing policy advice on global staffing and talent management to international managers and Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). This conceptual article draws upon key social anthropological and sociological theories, and proposes a relational research design for investigating NTEs, as well as propositions for future research.     

A strategic contingency approach to expatriate assignment management

This exploratory study examines how expatriate management practices differ with respect to three international management strategies (local, centralised or global) in 27 mature multinational corporations. In particular, this study examines the categories of expatriate assignments, the strategic integration of expatriate assignments into leadership development and the types of human resource practices that firms utilise to manage expatriates. Results indicate that organisations differentially assign expatriates based on the firm's respective international management strategy. Firms with a global management strategy made greater use of developmental expatriates, had a greater number of senior managers with expatriate experience and had a stronger focus on leadership development through expatriation. Firms did not differ with respect to their use of expatriate management practices based on their international management strategy.     

Middle Manager Leadership and Frontline Employee Performance: Bypass,Cascading, and Moderating Effects

We investigated the relationship between middle managers' transformational leadership and the performance of frontline employees who are two levels below the middle managers. We identified two pathways through which this cross‐level influence occurs and tested two moderators operating on these two pathways. The first pathway is a direct effect from middle managers to employees, bypassing the influence of employees' immediate supervisor (the bypass effect). We further hypothesized that the bypass effect is moderated by the employees' collectivistic value. The second pathway is a cascading of leadership behaviours from middle managers to first‐line supervisors, whose transformational leadership then enhances employees' performance (the cascading effect). We further hypothesized that this cascading effect is moderated by the supervisors' power distance value. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 491 frontline employees, 98 frontline supervisors, and 30 middle managers in three organizations in China. The three‐level hierarchical linear modelling results supported the four hypotheses.