Here is a puzzle: if an Ostrich, a Bird, a Frog and a Lizard are moved to a foreign environment, which one of them has the best chance of successful adaption and adjustment? Taken literally, the puzzle sounds like a case for environmental biologists… yet, let’s look at it metaphorically and explore the theme of […]
Latest Research: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change over Time?
Radical change, such as through mergers or acquisitions, is integral to organizational life. Radical changes bring about qualitative changes in the ways people in the organization cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally interact with each other and the world around them. One increasingly common form of radical change in global organizations is replacing the native language of […]
Gender Bias in Academia: Latest Study Results
I have touched upon the topic of gender equality in my blog on several occasions, be it about gender diversity in the workplace, the gender pay gap, or gender imbalances in expatriation. As such, the topic is far from being new, yet it cannot be dismissed, as the challenge of gender equality continues to persist. […]
Four Worlds of Work: Which One Shall We Pick for Our Future?
The world of work is changing, we all hear about it, read about it and experience it. There is an increasing amount of self-checkout machines in customer care, more and more people are getting involved in virtual jobs, and employers are ever more eager to hire people with abilities to learn and adapt, rather than with […]
Should I Control You, if I Trust You? Recent Research on the Trust-Control Link in Russia
Reflecting about what nurtures personal and professional relationships, we are probably quick to think about trust as a main ingredient. And when you are asked what trust means, you probably think ‘less control’. If I trust you, I shouldn’t need or want to control you, right? Well, this logic is challenged as soon as you become a […]
Growth Mindset in Global Work: The Impact of the Belief of Malleability
In my last blog post I discussed Dweck’s mindsets theory and its implications in organizational settings, namely in relation to employees’ interests and inter-disciplinary problem solving skills. Today I would like to follow-up on the topic by looking more specifically into mindsets theory in the context of global work and expatriation. Indeed, the possible impact of a growth […]
Cosmopolitan Imaginary: Insights from the Latest Research
How do we understand the idea of cosmopolitanism? As an ideology and notion of self that doesn’t belong to any culture or country? As belonging to the world as a whole with no narrower cultural identifications? According to Gianpiero Petriglieri of INSEAD, cosmopolitanism is the aspiration to become a citizen of the world, it is […]
Human Diversity: Benefits for CEOs and Their Companies?
Embracing human diversityis not the strongest side of human nature. Plenty of social psychology concepts and research indicate how we tend to prefer people who are like us, form relationships with people who are alike rather than different, and categorize people similar to us into an ‘in-group’ and dissimilar people into an ‘out-group’. Evolutionary psychologists […]
Latest Research: Effective Personality Traits of Expats
One of the traditional and still common purposes of expatriation is managing a foreign subsidiary, hence, traditional expatriate roles are to be found in senior executive levels and senior management teams. Given the responsibilities attached to these positions, and the costs of expatriation for the organization, the importance of success for such international assignments can […]
Corporate Philanthropy in the Aftermath of Natural Disaster: The Latest Research
The past few months have been like an endless series of natural disasters. First, there were the devastating floods in South Asia during the summer. Then, starting at the end of August, the U.S. got hit by hurricanes: Hurricane Harvey in Houston and Hurricane Irma in Florida. Simultaneously, Hurricane Katia battered Mexico, which in early […]
Latest Research: ‘Navigating between Home, Host, and Global Identities’
Business activities today regularly reach across cultural boundaries, and collaborative work with people of different cultural backgrounds becomes an everyday normality. Alongside the increasing exposure to culturally pluralistic settings, the question of cultural identities and the process of acculturation also receives more and more attention. In fact, we increasingly see cases of people holding multiple […]
The Culturally Humble Expat
International assignments are costly, which is why both researchers and practitioners are in constant search for the right formula of successful expatriation. Given that international assignments are meant to be ‘bridging the gaps’, be it in terms of knowledge sharing or the transfer of other resources, good relationships and cooperation between expats and locals seem […]
Latest Research: Expats and Ethnic Identity Congruence
Let’s say you are a multinational corporation with headquarters in Canada and plan to send an expatriate to your subsidiary in China. Who would you most likely send, a French Canadian manager, or an ethnic Chinese manager? I suspect you would pick the latter as we quite naturally assume that expatriates, who share similarities with […]
Latest Research: The Role of Global Leadership
The most recent DHL Global Connectedness Index, analyzing the state of globalization around the world, suggests that we don’t quite live in a ‘flat’ world. Indeed, in spite of visible global interconnectedness, the actual numbers related to international flows of products and services, capital, information, and people, show that globalization is much more limited than […]
Benefits of Telecommuting: Recent Research
When speaking of progressive workplace policies, telecommuting is definitely one to mention. The term ‘telecommuting’ refers to employees using modern technologies to work outside their office, let it be their home or any other location, either regularly or from time to time. As described in one of my earlier blog posts, telecommuting is a trend […]
The Many Benefits of a Shared Language in Multinationals
Knowledge sharing is a critical activity when it comes to multinational enterprises (MNEs) and doing business across borders. In my previous blog posts I have already touched upon the importance of global employees as ‘linking pins’ between headquarters (HQ) and subsidiaries, discussed the required input of both, knowledge transmitters and receivers, and brought up the […]
