Having just returned from our annual family skiing trip I have been reminded of how important it is to conserve and restore your energy resources. A few consecutive, full days of skiing can easily sap your physical energy. But we all know that our mental energy is a finite resource as well. And sometimes it […]
Living in a Terrorized World
Two years ago I wrote about expatriation and terrorism, arguing that global mobility professionals pay increasingly more attention to terror-related issues. Unfortunately in light of the recent ‘wave of terrorism’, be it the Nice attack in France, the Ansbach bombing in Germany, or the Orlando nightclub shooting (quite honestly, you name it), the case of […]
Global Mobility Functions: Bringing Value, but Struggling to Demonstrate It
In my latest blog entry I argued that globalization is in need of global leaders, who would allow for a more integrative approach in fostering globalization further. Indeed, globalization seems to need an extra push, as contrary to general perceptions of global interconnectedness, actual data indicates that the world is still not ‘flat’. Echoing this […]
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 […]
Towards More Gender-Inclusive Mobility!
Diversity is a cornerstone in today’s globalized world. In the current global political arena, diversity seems to be a source of social unrest and heated debate. Yet, in the global business world there is a solid consensus on the benefits of and need for diversity. Both practitioners and researchers seem to agree that cultural, racial, […]
Globalization Attacked as Never Before
This week the Euro 2016 semi-finals and the final will be played and many football fans will be living through the decisive moments of the European football tournament, which will culminate on Sunday 10 of July. Yet, even amid all the football buzz, another decisive moment for Europe could not remain unnoticed. UK voted FOR […]
EURO 2016 showcases the Multicultural Europe
In line with the popular movie-based expression ‘I know what you did last summer’, since last Friday we may be popularizing ‘I know what you did last evening’. For many this would imply the obvious—namely football (soccer)! Yes, the EURO 2016 has started, which means watching football matches, discussing teams’ odds to win, and reading […]
Color BLIND or Color BRAVE?
Let’s start with a small mental experiment today. Imagine you walked into a room of a major corporation and every single person in the boardroom was black. Wouldn’t you think this is weird? Now imagine that you walked into another Fortune 500 company and all people in the boardroom were white males… When will it […]
Global Hazards and Global Business
McKinsey’s recent survey on globalization reveals that geopolitical instability has become a critical influence on global business. Indeed, the number of executives who attribute high importance to the factor of geopolitical instability has doubled in two years. According to the survey data, geopolitical risks are today as important for companies as other previously impactful factors, […]
Expat-preneurs: A New Type of Global Employees
Within the global workforce exist a whole range of international work experiences. When referring to expatriation, we are speaking about traditional company-initiated expats, who are sent abroad for either shorter or longer periods of time. That is a very simplistic distinction though, as the landscape of company-initiated assignments is constantly changing, producing an increasing variety […]
What we know and don’t know about intercultural competence
Intercultural competence is one of the salient topics in the field of global mobility, with ongoing interest in both academic and applied settings. For example, implications of intercultural competence can’t be overseen when speaking about global workforce mobility, multicultural team management, cross-cultural collaborations in both business and education domains, immigration, and the current refugee crisis. […]
Latest Insights from Expat Industry Survey
Recently, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sponsored by UnitedHealthcare Global, surveyed 360 executives from North America and Europe and conducted five in-depth interviews with experts to examine companies’ experiences with global mobility. In the following I will highlight some key report data that caught my eye. • Assignment geography is not about the traditional home […]
In Case Topics on Global Mobility Have Started to Bore You already…
Recently IESE Business School had the pleasure of hosting its first independent TED event. Among many inspiring speakers was also one of our MBA students, Mariano Torrente, who spoke about our capacity to be surprised and wonder. Although a magician himself, Mariano argued that magic can be found all around us, not just in the […]
Best Practices in Leading Virtual Teams
‘Once upon a time, when people were still using paper and pen for writing up their thoughts and communication implied physical proximity, people used to work together by gathering in one room and discussing different problems and possible solutions…these people would be highly familiar with each other, they would speak the same language, they would look […]
Expatriate Reentry Training: Insights from Recent Research
Several years ago in one of my blog posts I posed a question whether starting an expatriate assignment requires more company support than repatriation. Despite the common logic that going abroad to a new and unfamiliar place should be more challenging than returning home to a familiar place, this notion couldn’t be further from reality. […]
Benefits of Multilingualism: Some New Evidence
Imagine a person, who sits in a restaurant in front of you, asking you to pass her ‘that plate on the right’… Would you reach out for the plate to your right or to your left? The answer may lie in perspective taking, meaning that if you would take the perspective of the other person, […]
Digital Globalization: The New Era and its Implications
Although many consider globalization to be the buzzword of the last decades, economic historians would argue that globalization has a history that stretches back thousands of years. As brought up in a relevant Economist article, the trend of trade expansion is linked to specialization and is ‘nearly as old as civilization’. The process seems quite […]
