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This paper presents insights on expatriates in Africa and sets out a research agenda for Africa’s expatriation. The objective of the paper is to provide background and context on expatriation in Africa and to stimulate and guide further research in this important area.

The reviewed papers were drawn from journals and other sources that reported on expatriation to/from African countries. It also incorporates an array of literature on contextual African issues, exploring conceptually how these relate to expatriation.

The review confirmed that there is little research on the topic, particularly with respect to outward expatriation and the studies that exist are one of a kind and stand alone. There has been no attempt to build systematic theory or develop a wholistic picture. This means that the field is wide open for more research. The data provide a picture of the current expatriate situation, including numbers, demographics, host/home locations, success rates and so on, and are provide a basis for further research developing and testing hypotheses regarding individual, organizational and country/national characteristics and how these influence and relate to expatriate experiences and outcomes. Researchers can also draw on the existing expatriation literature from around the world for replication studies to identify uniquely African issues as well as similarities with other locations. As Selmer (2016) noted, replication research is widely used in the sciences and is at the core of the scientific method and thus should be considered for expatriation research.

Limited previous research means there is a need for further research.

Expatriation is a critical aspect of companies operating internationally and companies are increasingly interested in doing business in African countries. Africa's economic growth and development are strong and foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa is growing with consequent increases in the number of expatriates going to Africa. Understanding expatriation in the African context is thus very important to a variety of companies.

Management literature focusing on Africa is limited and this is true regarding expatriation. This means there is a need for researchers and practitioners to understand expatriation issues in this context, particularly considering economic growth on the continent, increasing interest in doing business there, along with increasing FDI and use of expatriates, as well as the expansion of African companies. This paper provides a research agenda as a guide on which researchers, including those in Africa, can build.

This study aims to investigate the influence mechanism of expatriates' cultural intelligence (CQ) on expatriate effectiveness (task performance and premature return intention), identifying work engagement as a mediator and cultural distance as a boundary condition.

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory and the person–environment fit (P–E fit) theory, a moderated mediation model is built. Working with a sample of 303 international construction expatriates collected by snowball sampling, the hypotheses are tested by using the structural equation model analysis.

Work engagement partially mediates the relationship between expatriates' CQ and task performance, as well as fully mediates the relationship between expatriates' CQ and premature return intention. Cultural distance moderates the positive relationship between CQ and work engagement, as well as moderates the mediating effects of work engagement.

The impacts of potential moderators (e.g. work–family conflict and organizational culture) on the relationship between CQ and expatriate effectiveness have not been considered in this study.

This study is useful for international construction firms to optimize the allocation of human resources.

This study contributes to the expatriate literature by adding empirical evidence to explain the influence mechanism of expatriates' CQ on expatriate effectiveness.

Extant expatriate literature largely adopts a global north/western focus and expatriate-centric approach in investigating spousal/partners’ motives for supporting expatriation. Contrastingly, this study focuses on the lived experiences of dual-career female partners from an emerging global south economy and a patriarchal society as it relates to motives for supporting a partner’s international assignment (IA) to a developed country.

This investigation adopts a hermeneutic interpretive phenomenology research design. Twelve career-oriented female partners from an emerging global south economy (Brazil) who supported a partner’s IA to a developed country (USA) participated in this study. The data included semi-structured interviews and field notes.

The study indicates that societal constraints, gendered career experiences and career and life stage reasons influenced women’s decision to engage in career opt out and/or interruption in support of their partners' IA. Further, patriarchal long-lasting structures and ideologies shaped women’s career experiences; women perceived IAs as a means of acquiring embodied and institutionalized cosmopolitan capital for themselves and their families in order to gain a better position in a transnational/globalized world.

Although the sample size of this study is appropriate for the methodological choice adopted, future studies should include more participants and address different socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts.

This study highlights dual-career female partners' lived experiences in an emerging global south economy and a patriarchal society as it relates to motives for supporting IAs.

In an environment of intensive global mobility, this study aims to investigate the performance role of staffing choices within diverse MNE subsidiary strategies. Incorporating the integration-responsiveness (IR) framework with a contingency perspective, this study proposes that the performance success of distinct MNE subsidiary strategies depends on staffing choices. This study argues that performance differences of staffing choices such as assigned expatriates, self-initiated expatriates, former inpatriates and host-country nationals derive from their different knowledge/experience advantages regarding the intra-firm environment and local market conditions.

The study utilizes a unique sample of 169 foreign subsidiaries located in Greece that faced the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (in 2020). For robustness reasons, this study also captures the imposition of capital controls (in June 2015).

This study finds important mediating performance effects of a diversified human resource portfolio across distinct subsidiary strategies in difficult times. Integration strategy tends to use more assigned expatriates, locally responsive strategy tends to utilize more host-country nationals, whereas multi-focal strategy favors self-initiated expatriates and former inpatriates, with positive subsidiary performance effects accordingly. So, staffing policies that are suitable to balance the needs of Human Resource Management (HRM) portfolio differ from strategy to strategy. Moreover, this study finds that managing HRM diversity is crucial in turbulent times.

While the empirical evidence has been predominantly accumulated from large economies, largely neglecting performance effects of MNE subsidiary staffing in crisis contexts, the analysis sheds light on a small open economy (i.e. the Greek context) emphasizing rapidly environmental deterioration. The findings extend existing theorizing on international performance and HRM management by providing an integrative conceptual framework linking integration-responsiveness motivated strategies with distinct groups of high-quality human resources under contingency considerations, so creatively synthesizing largely fragmented IB and HRM research streams. The study provides valuable insights into the performance role of non-conventional staffing choices such as self-initiated expatriates and former inpatriates, given that relevant studies examine either exclusively expatriates or compare expatriates with host country nationals, reaching inconclusive results.

The aim of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of the field of international human resource management (IHRM) research by tracing its evolutionary development over a 24-year period. The study seeks to understand how the field has progressed by considering historical research themes and their subsequent integration into more recent scholarly work, thereby identifying current and emerging research trends.

This paper employs bibliometric analysis to examine the evolutionary path of IHRM research from 1995 to 2019. A dataset of 1,507 articles from journals specializing in IHRM, international business and general management was created. Analysis at the keyword, thematic and network levels was conducted to identify trends, historical context and the interrelatedness of research themes.

The analysis reveals that IHRM research has gone through several phases of thematic focus, from initial emphasis on cultural differences and expatriate management to more recent topics like global talent management and digital transformation. Earlier research themes continue to be incorporated and re-contextualized in modern scholarship, highlighting the field’s dynamic nature.

This paper is one of the first to use a bibliometric approach to systematically examine the evolution of IHRM research. It not only provides a historical perspective but also outlines future research trends, incorporating the institutional logic perspective. The findings offer deep insights that are valuable for researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in the development of IHRM research and its practical implications.

Building on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explore how overall justice climate (OJC) and cross-cultural psychological capital (CCPsyCap) help highly skilled expatriates develop creative behaviours despite disruptive global macro-events. This topic has not been extensively researched in the context of expatriation, especially amongst self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

The data were collected through a web-based questionnaire from 307 SIEs coming from the MENA region and working in different sectors of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The responses were analysed via partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

Empirical evidence shows that no significant direct correlation exists between the OJC and the creativity of SIEs. However, the results demonstrate that this relationship was completely mediated by CCPsyCap.

The context of high uncertainty may limit individuals' cognitive abilities amongst individuals, in turn, reducing their level of creativity. In this regard, this study identifies the need for host organisations to develop fair human resource policies to enhance creative behaviours amongst SIEs in such a context. It also underlines the role of psychological resources as a coping mechanism that helps those expatriates cope with the diverse challenges of their international assignments.

This study offers new theoretical support for understanding how the combination of OJC and psychological resources constitutes a springboard for enhancing SIEs' creativity in a context of hardship. This study also advances the COR theory by adopting a “cross-level resources caravans” approach.

The main objective of this paper is twofold: to analyse the progress of a research stream concerning expatriate academics in the last four decades and to make recommendations for further studies in this field.

In this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) concerning expatriate academics was applied. The search embraced the period from 1980–2022. The review was performed in two interdisciplinary electronic databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The selection process of papers was conducted in steps, as recommended by the PRISMA protocol. The total pool of articles received after the exclusion criteria was 110. The content of each paper was thus extracted and categorised in Excel file: author, year of publication, tittle of article, journal, theory applied, research method, sample size, country/field of investigation.

For almost three decades this topic was almost absent in the literature of the subject. The most active publication period started from 2009 and since then there have been two “waves” of published articles devoted to expatriate academics: 2009–2014 and 2017–2021. The significant number of studies appeared in Journal of Global Mobility followed by Personnel Review, IJHRM, Higher Education. The thematic analysis revealed six themes which have been already researched on expatriates academics: (1) motives, (2) adjustment, (3) job factors and work outcomes, (4) academic missions, (5) academic career, (6) women and men in academia.

Practitioners and university management might find this article useful as the article allows to manage this pool of international academics more efficiently with mutual benefits for expatriates and organisations. This study may assist the university authorities to develop systemic approach to attract foreign academics; adjust the same in work and culture domain through effective training; support in organisational, financial and career field; create the performance criteria of expatriate work related to three missions: research, teaching and service; introduce metrics and indicators to evaluate the contribution and work outcomes of foreign scientists into the host university.

This review shows that there are many new perspectives and models through which the academic expatriation can be analysed. This paper gives an insight into the academic literature on academics expatriates. The paper is innovative and has contributed to research by doing an SLR in a new area (academic expats) and tackling all the areas that has been covered by academic research so far. New research directions have been recommended for future research, to open the field further.

Drawing on experiential learning theory, this study seeks to understand how the perceived cultural difference in a foreign country and learning flexibility, which enables more integrated experiential learning from international experience, influence expatriates’ cultural intelligence (CQ) and consequently their adjustment and job performance.

Survey data were collected from 169 expatriates in China. Polynomial regression analyses were employed to test curvilinear relationships between cultural difference and CQ and between learning flexibility and CQ. Mediation hypotheses were tested either by the MEDCURVE procedure if a curvilinear relationship was confirmed or by the Haye’s Process procedure if a curvilinear relationship was not confirmed and instead a linear relationship was confirmed.

The results demonstrated a positive relationship between cultural difference and CQ and an inverted U-shape relationship between learning flexibility and CQ. CQ mediated the relationship between cultural difference and expatriate adjustment and partially mediated the relationship between learning flexibility and expatriate adjustment. CQ positively influenced expatriates’ job performance via expatriate adjustment.

Our findings suggest that companies should not hesitate to send expatriates on assignments to culturally very different countries and focus more attention on the selection of expatriates. The findings of this study suggest firms should choose candidates who are moderate or high in learning flexibility and could engage in integrated learning and specialized learning in a more balanced manner.

This research is the first study that examines the influence of learning flexibility on CQ and expatriate effectiveness. It examines cultural difference through the lens of experiential learning theory and argues that cultural difference constitutes “stimuli” in the experiential learning environment for individual learning in an international context. The results advance our knowledge of the role of experiential learning in developing capable global managers.

This qualitative study has two aims. The first is to explore the cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of Eurasian self-initiated expatriates’ (SIEs) work and non-work adjustments in Korea. The second is to understand how the Confucian-oriented Korean culture influences Eurasian SIEs' work and non-work domains, in particular their organisational practices and relations with locals.

This study was conducted through a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 27 Eurasian SIEs working in Korea. The interviews were conducted face-to-face with open-ended questions.

Eurasian SIEs in Korea express different cognitive, affective, and behavioural life and work adjustment processes that affect their future careers. A high level of language proficiency and knowledge of cultural and social expectations does not guarantee work and life adjustment success. Due to the heavy presence of Korean culture in work and living environments, SIEs face challenges in joining social and work networks and balancing work and life domains, which slows down adjustment. Results indicate that SIEs adjusted well regarding cognitive and behavioural dimensions in work and non-work domains. However, affective adjustment is difficult to achieve, even for SIEs who have lived in the country for many years, and many have the intention to leave if there were other options.

This study contributes to the literature by focussing on the multidimensionality of SIEs' work and life adjustments, with cognitive, affective, and behavioural components. SIEs have been in a complicated process of adaptation and integration for a long time. This study attempts to contribute to SIE literature by analysing the elements of Confucianism-oriented Korean culture and organisational practices prevalent in SIEs' multidimensional adjustment and career challenges.

This study aims to develop an extended social attachment model for expatriates, integrating a multiple stakeholder perspective, to understand evacuation decisions during disasters.

Through interviews with 12 Tokyo-based expatriates who experienced the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, this study collects the lived experiences of a diverse set of expatriates. This data is analyzed abductively to map relevant evacuation factors and to propose a reaction typology.

While the 2011 Tohoku disasters caused regional destruction and fears of nuclear fallout, Tokyo remained largely unscathed. Still, many expatriates based in Tokyo chose to leave the country. Evacuation decisions were shaped by an interplay of threat assessment, location of attachment figures and cross-cultural adjustment. The study also discusses the influence of expatriate types.

Disaster planning is often overlooked or designed primarily with host country nationals in mind. Expatriates often lack the disaster experience and readiness of host country nationals in disaster-prone regions in Asia and beyond, and thus might need special attention when disaster strikes. This study provides advice for how to do so.

By unpacking the under-researched and complex phenomenon of expatriate reactions to disasters, this study contributes to the fields of international human resource and disaster management. Specifically, seven proposition on casual links leading to expatriate evacuation are suggested, paving the way for future research.