Editorial: time travel

Citation

Selmer, J. (2015), "Editorial: time travel", Journal of Global Mobility, Vol. 3 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-09-2015-0042

Editorial: time travel

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Global Mobility, Volume 3, Issue 4.

Unlike Hollywood's fictionalized form of time travel that involves decades or even centuries, time travel entailing hours is a real phenomenon for globally mobile professionals. Jet-lag could be a nuisance, but modern time travel may also lead to more serious consequences such as moving or extending work hours to align them with another continent's time zone. Although there is research on how that may affect individuals working in service industries, such as financial institutions or call centers, in which the sun never sets, little can be found in the literature on global mobility. For example, the effects of such onerous work schedules on expatriate families are not well known, and this is most unfortunate since accompanying partners and children tend to have a significant influence on the outcome of foreign assignments. This is a substantial research gap well worth bridging, and the Journal of Global Mobility (JGM) welcomes manuscripts with such cutting-edge ideas.

JGM provides a better service than many established academic journals, offering a prompt and professional revise and resubmit process. Indeed, the journal has very impressive average editorial turnaround times compared with industry standards.

Number of days from submission to first decision (benchmark: 60 days): 41.3 days. Reviewer turnaround time (benchmark: 30 days): 19.8 days. Time to assign reviewer (benchmark: 14 days): 7.4 days. Days from submission to final decision (benchmark: 180 days): 73.0 days.

We also use the best reviewers within the field of global mobility, ensuring high-quality, developmental feedback to authors.

JGM is the only academic journal to consistently and exclusively focus on global mobility issues. That means all authors' articles will be read by like-minded scholars and practitioners. The coverage of JGM ranges from traditional business expatriates to new emerging themes, such as NGO expatriates and diplomats. The main focus is on white-collar or skilled workers or professionals and their immediate context at work and outside work. Our upcoming special issues on “Context and global mobility: diverse global work arrangements”, guest-edited by Maike Andresen, Michael Dickman, and Arno Haslberger, as well as “Expatriates in context: expanding perspectives on the expatriate situation” with Fabian Froese and Soo Min Toh as guest editors, contribute to fill considerable research gaps in the extant literature.

JGM welcomes all kinds of rigorous research methods, but we are also keen to publish thorough theoretical developments and focused literature reviews. Besides that, we are interested in research at various levels of analysis – individual, team, organizational, or even national. We also encourage research from a variety of academic domains, as well as cross-disciplinary studies.

In this issue

The first paper in this issue, authored by Graeme Ditchburn and Elizabeth R. Brook, explores the relationship between interpersonal needs and cross-cultural adjustment by applying the theory of fundamental interpersonal relations orientation (FIRO) as measured by the FIRO-B (Behavior) scale. This novel approach reveals that there are associations between expatriates' motives for interaction and their extent of cross-cultural adjustment informing the recruitment and training of expatriates in relevant areas. The next paper, Paula Makkonen investigates the perceived employability of western self-initiated expatriates in local organizations in China. The study is one of the first to explore career trajectories of western self-initiated expatriates and it addresses the dynamic aspect of perceived employability applying perspectives of conservation of resources theory and non-local employees in cross-cultural career settings. S. Kubra Canhilal, Rachel Gabel Shemueli, and Simon Dolan are the authors of the third paper about antecedent factors of expatriate success in Peru applying a multi-level perspective of individual, organizational, and contextual factors. They find that factors on all three levels are relevant for the success of international assignments. The importance of the antecedents is discussed related to the host context and implications for selection, cross-cultural training, and development are discussed. The fourth paper, authored by Kerri Anne Crowne, Richard J. Goeke, and Mary E. Shoemaker, proposes a model to explain how online social networks may contribute to the adjustment of expatriates via their positive influence on well-being and knowledge transfer which in turn may have a benevolent impact on expatriates' adjustment and job performance. Ubiquitous as online social networks have become, little academic research examine the potential impact of online social networks on expatriates. The last paper of this issue, by Robert Lawrence Quigley, Lisbeth Claus, and Ashley Nixon, is an exploratory duty of care study of American students and expatriates abroad. A very large number of records of requests for assistance to a global assistance service provider for these two groups were compared in terms of closing diagnoses and case outcome types. Findings show that the students are more likely than expatriates to be diagnosed with behavioral health issues, to be referred to a health provider (rather than being treated) and to be evacuated or repatriated. These findings imply that corporate organizational support structures for expatriates may be different than those universities provide to students.

Routinely working irregular hours, or making others do so, may neither be physically nor psychologically healthy. This is just another element of stress and strain that globally mobile individuals may experience. International organizations requiring global mobility of their employees need to be aware of such consequences of modern time travel. Academics in this area can help inform international human resource managers about the trials of time travel by conducting more research on this topic. Such research findings are a good example of what JGM strives to publish. By creating expert content for experts, JGM attracts both reputable scholars and readers. The JGM editorial team and the best reviewers all contribute to make JGM the leading outlet for academic research on global mobility and expatriate management.

Jan Selmer