Self‐initiated expatriates and their career success

Psychological contract breach and emotional exhaustion among self-initiated expatriates: The role of social support and cultural orientation

Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) face a unique set of challenges associated with working abroad without organizational sponsorship or support. A lack of clarity about mutual obligations and responsibilities can often lead to misunderstandings about the terms of the employment relationship and to perceptions of psychological contract breach. Drawing on a sample of self-initiated expatriates working in the United Arab Emirates, this study examines the relationship between psychological contract breach and emotional exhaustion exploring how culturally based value orientations and social support affect the relationship. Results indicate that individual-level cultural orientation can shape the responses of SIEs to perceived breaches and to its detrimental emotional effects. Individuals with a collectivist as opposed to an individualist orientation utilize more effectively social support from co-workers and supervisors and are less likely to be negatively affected by psychological contract breaches.

No room at the top? A system dynamics view of the recursive consequences of women's underrepresentation in international assignments

Purpose

The expatriation literature has developed an insightful body of research on the reasons why women are not assigned abroad as frequently as men. However, the authors know very little about the systemic and recursive consequences of women's underrepresentation in international assignments (IAs), which are examined in this conceptual paper.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing upon expatriation research and a system dynamics perspective, the authors propose a conceptual model to explain both women's underrepresentation in IAs and its recursive consequences.

Findings

The authors highlight how women's underrepresentation in IAs results from a complex system of recursive effects that jeopardizes women's professional development and undermines both their own career progression to top management and firms' competitive advantage and international growth. The authors argue that organizations make decisions that contravene their own interest in a competitive global context. First is that they are limiting their talent pool by not considering female candidates. Second is that they are missing the opportunity to use IAs to advance women's careers.

Research limitations/implications

The model provides a solid grounding for future research on selecting the most effective organizational actions and designing supportive measures to disrupt the persistent dynamics contributing to women's underrepresentation in IAs. Future research could also expand our study by incorporating individual differences and the proactive role that women may take.

Practical implications

The model points to specific managerial interventions (e.g. increased access to job training and specific training ahead of the assignment, dual-career support, women's mentoring and affirmative action) which have the potential to reduce women's underrepresentation in IAs and in top management.

Originality/value

The system dynamics approach enables a broader understanding of why women are underrepresented in IAs, how this underrepresentation further exacerbates gender segregation in international business, and how these recursive outcomes can be averted to the advantage of firms' sustainable growth.

Antecedents of career self-management: home country and international careers in Kuwait

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how leadership aspiration mediates the effect of career self-efficacy on employees' engagement in career self-management (CSM; i.e. deployment of career advancement strategies concerning access to power, psychological boundaryless and self-promotion), whether self-efficacy directly influences CSM, and whether these relations are conditional upon nationality (which is a proxy for domestic and international careers in Kuwait).

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire was completed by 615 highly educated young Kuwaitis and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs; Arab and South Asian nationals) working in Kuwait.

Findings

The results demonstrate that self-efficacy, directly and indirectly (mediated by leadership aspiration), influences the three types of career advancement strategies. Moderated-mediation analyses suggest that SIEs and Kuwaitis engage in similar CSM behaviors when it is motivated by self-efficacy, which is mediated by leadership aspiration. Also, self-efficacy has greater direct effect on SIEs' CSM than Kuwaitis', but Kuwaitis have higher tendency for CSM behavior.

Practical implications

Interventions aiming to improve employees' engagement in CSM may focus on enhancing their psychological capital and contexts, while minding the differential effects of nationality and self-efficacy on CSM of Kuwaitis and SIEs.

Originality/value

The study provides unique information about CSM utilizing understudied populations namely, Middle-Eastern and self-initiated expatriate employees. It confirms the effects of self-efficacy and leadership aspiration on CSM and reveals different effects of nationality depending on the motivators at play.

Exploring employer attitude towards migrant workers

Purpose

Migrants play an essential role in economic and societal outcomes of the host society, both as members of the workforce and as citizens. However, integration and finding employment after migration remain critical issues. The purpose of this paper is to employ an evidence-based quantitative approach to identify migrant workers’ most important qualifications from an employer perspective and to explore factors that influence employer perception of migrants.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses European Social Survey data that contain responses from managers in European countries in 2014 (n=2,828) and 2016 (n=3,014). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used to analyse the data.

Findings

For managers, migrants’ commitment to the host country’s way of life is more important than their job skills, educational level and language proficiency. The effects of managers’ individual characteristics, including demographics, expectancies and personal values, on their general attitude towards migrants are also quantified.

Practical implications

The study’s outcomes can assist migrants to develop the qualifications most valued by employers, and allow policymakers to integrate the organizational perspective into policies and initiatives for integration of migrant labour.

Originality/value

Through HR practices, organizations significantly affect migrants’ career outcomes. Yet research on migrant workers from an organizational and managerial perspective is limited. This study identifies migrant workers’ most important qualifications from an employer perspective. It also explores which individual characteristics most influence organizational decision-makers’ perception. Utilizing a cross-cultural and longitudinal data set provides a unique opportunity to generate generalizable findings.

How and why does expatriation management influence expatriates’ employability?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer a timely assessment of the influence of human resource (HR) processes and policies on expatriates’ employability, using a Dutch international engineering firm as the study setting.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative study, based on in-depth interviews with 15 respondents in various roles, such as expatriates, repatriates, HR managers and line managers, is complemented by a document analysis of HR policy reports about expatriation processes.

Findings

Expatriation management influences the internal employability of engineering expatriates, yet most HR policies related to expatriation work are counterproductive in terms of in-company employability of expatriates.

Research limitations/implications

Further research could extend this single case study by differentiating engineering from management functions and addressing employability implications for other assignments and other forms of expatriation. Comparisons are also possible across various stakeholders with regard to social support.

Practical implications

HR management can follow several prescriptions revealed by this study to increase expatriates’ employability within the organization.

Originality/value

This study is among the first to relate expatriation processes to the dimensions of employability.

Self-initiated expatriation: changing the ontological and methodological box

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer an ontological and methodological alternative to the functionalist paradigm which currently dominates study of the self-initiated expatriate (SIE). It argues conceptually, and with a practical example, that actor-network theory (ANT) offers an alternative way forward. While the functionalist study of SIE seeks to generate knowledge of value to organizations, ANT seeks to produce practical knowledge from the viewpoint of the SIE(s).

Design/methodology/approach

The paper critiques the dominant functionalist approach to the study of SIE through ANT. A case history of a geographically mobile professional is offered to support the use of ANT as an ontological and methodological alternative in this field.

Findings

By following the actors through their own stories of mobility the authors argue that it is possible to offer alternative ways of investigating and understanding mobility. In particular, actors enact mobility in unique ways as they move and are, therefore, not easily categorized and in singular classifications, such as the “SIE.”

Originality/value

The study of SIE is an important emerging field of expatriate research. It is currently dominated by the functionalist paradigm. The paper offers an alternative ontological and methodological approach to the study of this field through the use of ANT. In this sense the authors challenge the developing dominant discourse of functionalism currently driving research on this topic.

Do three years make a difference? An updated review and analysis of self-initiated expatriation

Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) were initially described by Inkson et al. (J World Bus 32:351–368, 1997) as individuals who move abroad on their own volition, with personal funding, oriented towards development and career goals. After almost two decades of research, it is imperative to review the knowledge that has been developed and identify future areas of intervention. Doherty (Int J Manag Rev 15:447–469, 2013. doi:10.1111/ijmr.12005) initiated the review and this paper aims to update it and explore some unapproached aspects. Five different data bases were targeted and searched for peer-reviewed articles published in English, between 1997 and 2014, which recognized self-initiated expatriation as a distinguished form of mobility and used this terminology in the title and/or keywords list. A total of 94 articles met these inclusion criteria, 45 of which were published between 2012 and 2014. By systematically analyzing them, it was observed a surpassing growth in the number of published articles in the last 3 years. This signalizes an increase of the academic interest in studying the SIEs all over the world, involving bidirectional moves between developed and developing countries. The constructs identified by Doherty (2013) at the three different levels (micro, meso and macro) continued to be explored, using qualitative or quantitative approaches. Besides this, a multi-informant approach has been adopted in some studies, while others focused on concept clarification, taking into consideration some of Doherty’s (2013) suggestions for future research. Three years of research made an enormous contribution to the development of knowledge about SIEs, but some aspects can be further explored; hence they are identified and thoroughly discussed.

Women and international assignments

Purpose

– Research on female expatriates has been substantially growing over the last decades and particularly in more recent years. Complementing previous thematic analyses of the literature, the purpose of this paper is to apply textual statistics and correspondence analysis to reveal the existing semantic structure of the field of research on female expatriates.

Design/methodology/approach

– Using correspondence analysis, the authors explored textual data from the abstracts of 151 identified journal articles published in English since 1975. The authors obtained a graphical representation showing the various developmental stages of research on female expatriates.

Findings

– The authors found that research follows a home-host country orientation and advances from an organizational focus toward individual-level studies. The authors identified various directions for future research and especially a strong need for more multilevel approaches to study men’s and women’s expatriate experiences and trajectories in various contexts.

Research limitations/implications

– Only articles with abstracts entered the analysis, which in turn was dependent on the content and quality of these abstracts. This limitation has been addressed by thoroughly reading each article considered.

Originality/value

– This review adopts an original method in research on (female) expatriates and more broadly management research. It enabled the authors to map out the development of key research themes over time. Based on this analysis, gaps in current research could be identified and clear directions for future research were formulated.

International Careers and Career Success of Indian Women in Science and Technology: The Importance of Career Capital and Organizational Capital

This article presents a study on international careers and career success of Indian women in Science & Technology (S&T). We conducted interviews with 30 (upper) middle class Indian women in New Delhi and Bangalore (India) who pursued careers abroad as self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). Important elements of career capital competencies in international career pursuits and career success of Indian women SIEs in S&T were: (a) families who value higher education and careers of their female children, which motivated women to pursue international careers to elevate family class status (knowing-why); (b) the motivation to gain knowledge and skills in science and technology (knowing-how) and (c) the encouragement and support from family for women’s international career pursuits, and international networks (knowing-whom). Furthermore, findings show that patriarchy entrenched in Indian society and culture resulted in a lack of organizational capital, which impede career success of women in S&T. We advise organizations in India to implement HR policies and practices embracing the development of career capital to empower Indian women in S&T to be successful in their international careers.

Effects of personality traits (big five) on expatriates adjustment and job performance

Purpose

– Researchers have been focusing on the predictors of expatriates adjustment and job performance at different levels (individual level, organizational level, and societal level) but still some of the predictors have been ignored or unclear in the expatriate literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of personality traits (big five) on expatriates adjustment and job performance.

Design/methodology/approach

– In this regards, data were collected from 201 expatriates working in Malaysia and analyzed by using structural equation modelling with Amos 16.

Findings

– The findings of this study indicated that personality traits (big five) which include extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism positively influence expatriate adjustment which further influence expatriate performance rated by peers. In other words, expatriates adjustment (work, interaction, and general) mediate the relationship between big five personality traits (extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) and expatriates job performance (task, relationship building, and overall performance).

Research limitations/implications

– The findings of this study will help the researchers to further understand the importance of personality traits required for successful completion of international assignment. Furthermore, the findings also suggest human resource professionals to consider these personality traits before selecting an individual for international assignment. Finally, future research directions have been proposed.

Originality/value

– Literature on expatriate adjustment and job performance is still at developing stage. This paper shed light on the individual characteristics which work as predictors for expatriates adjustment and job performance.

Working in the “Global Village”: The Influence of Cultural Intelligence on the Intention to Work Abroad

Firms' international activities require an early identification of potential employees with an intention to work abroad. Based on social cognitive theory the current study examines the influence of prior international exposure and cultural intelligence on the individual intention to work abroad. In particular, we examine the influence of language skills, international experience, and networks abroad on the intention to work abroad through cultural intelligence and the moderating role of cultural distance on this mediated relationship. Utilizing a sample of 518 German business students we show that networks abroad have a direct influence on the intention to work abroad, while cultural intelligence fully mediates the relationship between language skills as well as international experience and the intention to work abroad. Cultural distance moderates this mediation for two of the four cultural intelligence dimensions.