Although both practitioners and academics in the field of global mobility are well used to the term expatriate, the term inpatriate is still in need of further presentation. Indeed, the latter is far less used in publications, and even Microsoft Word is still underlining it as an unknown or incorrectly spelled word :). As such, […]
Corporate Volunteering: What Does the Latest Research Say?
Following-up on my last week’s post about corporate volunteering, I would like to review the latest academic research on the topic. Specifically, Paula Caligiuri together with colleagues (2013) has examined the conditions of employees’ corporate volunteer assignments, majority of which took place abroad, and their effects in relation to the different parties involved. Stemming from […]
Gender Diversity on a Global Scale: Different Perspectives
Gender diversity in organizations and female underrepresentation in management teams has been a widely discussed topic in global business. While I have already reviewed it in several of my previous blog posts, there are more recent publications that are very relevant and worth discussing. So, why are women still underrepresented in leadership positions? Is it […]
Adjustment in Extreme Contexts: The Case of Military Expats
Following up on the topic of extreme cases of expatriation that I recently touched upon, today I would like to review an interesting piece of academic work. Specifically, the scholars Fisher and Hutchings (2013) examined the relationship between cultural distance (CD) and expatriate adjustment in a rarely addressed area of intercultural collaboration in the military […]
Latest Research: Knowledge Transfer of HRM Practices Between Parent-country and Subsidiary
Corporate expatriates have always been an important group of globally mobile employees, because they can serve various organizational aims by fulfilling either practical or more strategic roles. For example, an employee can be sent on an international assignment to share important knowledge and optimize certain processes in a new company subsidiary, or on the other […]
Taxonomy of internationally mobile managers
Due to increased business globalization, the demand for competent international managers also continues to grow. Accordingly, international human resources management (IHRM) practices are constantly adapted to account for the many different ways that international work can be arranged. Indeed, several scholars argue that a classification within the group of international managers is needed, which would […]
Trailing Spouses: In Need of Organizational Support
The topic of international assignments is rarely discussed without mentioning issues of the accompanying partners, or so-called trailing spouses. According to different industry surveys (e.g. Brookfield, 2012; Cartus, 2012) the adjustment problems and dissatisfaction of spouses/partners, as well as dual-career issues, top the lists of expatriation challenges, and quite often become reasons for refusing an […]
Expatriation and Creativity: Does Cultural Adaptation Make the Brain ‘Workout’?
Some time ago, under the ‘fact or fiction’ category of my blog, I posted the question whether living abroad makes one more creative. Comments from many readers showed general agreement with this notion, and research evidence presented later on supported it as well. Back then we looked at research by Maddux and colleagues (2009, 2010) […]
What Are the Implications of Being Compelled to Expatriate?
In today’s business environment, globality is a term referring to modernity, opportunities, prosperity, and is almost a necessity when speaking about market competitiveness. Hence, organizations and recruitment agencies alike are looking for globally minded people, and highly value and promote international experience. Moreover, sooner than later career paths that entail various international assignments will be […]
Defining the ‘‘global’’ in global leadership
Global leadership is the buzzword of the 21st century. Reviewing the global leadership literature with my colleagues (Mendenhall, Reiche, Bird & Osland, 2012), we have noticed that although there is a plethora of definitions available, few attempts have been made to unify them. Hence, our intent was to fill this gap and we came up with a conceptual model of ‘global’.