Multinational corporations continue expanding abroad and thus try to populate foreign markets more and more. For instance, a lot has been said and written about emerging markets, which lure Western corporations with good investment opportunities. At the same time, there is also a reverse trend of emerging-market brands going global. As such, all businesses with […]
Expats in Emerging Markets: Revising Previous Trends?
Exactly two years ago I wrote about emerging markets and the scarcity of talent these markets were experiencing. As the main message read, multinational corporations started actively expanding into emerging markets where they faced a lack of talent because local managers often did not have the necessary set of skills and preparation. As such, emerging […]
The F-Day
‘It’s F-Day – the day half the world has awaited with bated breath for the past two years’ – that is the introduction for one of the many articles covering one of the most recent hot topics in the business world. Specifically, F-Day refers to the 1st of July 2014, which is when a new […]
The Deep Waters of Global Business Travel
Today global travel in general and global business travel in particular is not really a problem. It still comes at a cost, yet it is a great asset for multinational companies, because they can get the people they need to the locations they want for the duration that is required. There are multiple travel modes, […]
What Can Global Teams Learn from the FIFA World Cup?
Joining in on the frenzy of the football World Cup in Brazil, this week I would like to draw some parallels between the world of professional football and the world of global business. To start with, the casual transition that football players have between their club teams and national teams is quite striking. Looking into […]
The Expat Dilemma: Building New or Keeping Old Relationships
In one of my recent posts, I discussed the cases of expats visiting home, missing the familiarity of it and trying to balance between the ‘new’ (even if temporary) and ‘old’ homes. Continuing on this topic of this double expat life, today I would like to focus on expats’ relationships, and more specifically, their friendships. […]
Expat Homesickness: Is It really that Bad?
Are you an expat, who was assigned to a year-long project abroad, and who feels homesick? I believe, many will understand you. Or are you a spouse, who decided to leave your life back home to accompany your partner, and you feel homesick? Well, that is also quite normal. What if you are an expat, […]
Multilingualism: Multiple Personalities or Just a Diverse One?
Governed by the needs of globalization, I believe it is fair to state that multilingualism is becoming a MUST in the increasingly multicultural business world. Apart from simply possessing more than one language, multilingual individuals are usually more culturally competent (linguistic knowledge decreases cross-cultural barriers), have a more efficient brain (take a look here), and […]
Working in a Cross-cultural Environment: Where to Look for Cultural Gaps?
Multicultural, multinational, and multilingual teams are part and parcel of global organizations of today. This highlights the importance of cultural competencies, cross-cultural cooperation, and leadership of multinational teams. Indeed, the main question for many is how to do business and effectively manage in such a culturally diverse environment? Cultural competence: too broad to grasp? Well […]
When an Expat Visits Home: Caught Between Two Worlds?
In this blog I have written several articles about expats’ difficulties and challenges for the initial adjustment abroad, and also about the difficulties of repatriation. However, what has been less discussed in my blog so far is the time ‘in-between’, namely when the expat is visiting home during the international assignment. Are there any potential […]
Gender Bias on a Global Scale
Remember the last time you did something wrong or experienced a failure? How did you explain it? I bet you could have attributed many reasons to some sort of situational factors. For example, you could have failed to execute some work assignment on time due to having many other urgent tasks, right? Now, think of […]
The Return of the Expat Allowance
Given the recent focus on the economic crisis in financial news reporting, many headlines in the area of global mobility were about reductions of expat costs and, more specifically, of expat compensation packages. At the beginning of this year however, several sources predicted possible changes to the cost reduction orientation, arguing that talent scarcity will […]
Latest Global Mobility Highlights: Decrease in Long-Term Assignments
When talking about expatriation we tend to think primarily about traditional long-term assignments, which are two to three years in duration and imply an employee relocation to the host country. These are the assignments that we readily relate to attractive compensation and benefit packages, career enhancing moves, and profound cross-cultural experiences. However, in spite of […]
From Trailing Spouse to Career Chameleon: In Search of Identity
As human beings we all have a need to define ourselves, specify who we are, categorize ourselves in relation to others and find a way to present ourselves to the world. In other words, we all create personal identities, which entail the perception we have about our roles, interests, characteristics, relationships, and membership in social […]
Empathic Listening: Listening or Simply Hearing?
As long as four decades ago American psychologist Paul Ekman boosted the study of human emotions and came up with what we know today as six basic and universally recognized emotions. According to Ekman’s and much of the following research, people universally show and are able to recognize the facial expressions of such emotions as […]
Expat Lifestyle, Travel Bug and Addiction
‘Once an expat, always an expat’, ‘catching the travel bug’ and ‘itchy feet syndrome’ – these are some of the fairly common phrases you come across when looking through expat blogs, forums and global mobility related articles. Indeed, sometimes expatriation moves from merely a one-time international work experience to a nomadic lifestyle, and there are […]
