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In this contribution, we systematically review the extant global leadership literature to identify important bibliometric and thematic patterns in evidence in this evolving field of scholarship. Conceptualizing the phenomenon to include leaders/managers/supervisors who hold global, expatriate, or international positions, we draw out insights accumulated from a total of 327 published articles in key management and organizational behavior journals listed in Scopus. Our analysis proceeds in two sequential phases. Our bibliometric analysis first identifies the most cited articles, most published first authors, country bases of first authors, and frequently publishing journals in this field. This characterizes both the diversity and innovative nature of scholarship in the field. Our thematic content analysis, generated through Nvivo 11, isolates two dominant overarching themes that represent the wellspring for the body of literature, namely global leader development and global leader effectiveness. These themes of development and effectiveness are further explicated through six distinct lenses namely cultural, cognitive, learning, personality trait, social/relational, and political. These lenses are underpinned by a suite of theoretical perspectives encompassing individual, system, and contextual considerations. In combination, these sets of analyses bring added systematics to the field and serve as a point of departure for future inquiry.

Drawing on socio-cognitively orientated leadership studies, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of host country employees’ (HCEs) negative perceptions of successive expatriate leadership by exploring how their memories of shared past experiences affect these perceptions. Contrary to previous work which tends to focus on HCEs’ attitudes towards individual expatriates, the authors shift attention to successive executive expatriate assignments within a single subsidiary.

The paper is based on an intrinsic case study carried out in a Polish subsidiary of an American multinational pharmaceutical company which had been managed by four successive expatriate General Managers and one local executive. The authors draw on interview data with 40 HCEs. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff who had been managed by at least three of the subsidiary’s expatriate leaders.

The authors demonstrate how transference triggered by past experiences with expatriate leaders as well as HCEs’ implicit leadership theories affect HCEs’ negative perceptions of expatriate leadership and lead to the emergence of expatriate leadership schema.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the role of transference and implicit leadership theories in HCEs’ perceptions of successive executive expatriate assignments. By focussing on retrospective accounts of HCEs who had been managed by a series of successive expatriate leaders, our study has generated a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of the role of HCEs’ shared past experiences in shaping their perceptions of expatriate leadership. The authors propose a new concept – expatriate leadership schema – which describes HCEs’ cognitive structures, developed during past experiences with successive expatriate leaders, which specify what HCEs believe expatriate leadership to look like and what they expect from it.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relation between perceived cultural distances and the willingness to adjust symbolic leadership by expatriates. Further, it is asked whether this adjustment has the potential to increase their acceptance as leader by the foreign workforce.

The research derives testable propositions from symbolic leadership theory and the theory about cultural distance and transfers them into a structural equation model in order to identify the impact of cultural distance on expatriates’ adjustment effort. Therefore, an empirical investigation among German expatriates in the Philippines was conducted.

The study contributes to the understanding of symbolic leadership in several unique ways. It is found that there is a relationship between perceived cultural distance and a willingness for symbolic leadership behavior in order to reduce social sanctions caused by unappropriated symbolism. The study shows that willingness to adopt foreign symbols does not lead to an increased acceptance.

This research implies that the willingness alone is not sufficient if the appropriate cultural knowledge and required skills do not exist. Thus, this study points to the importance of expatriates’ cultural knowledge for the success of foreign assignments.

This study aims to examine the significance of transformational leadership and social support for expatriate adjustment and performance. This study also extends relevant literature on expatriate management to examine the relationships among transformational leadership, social support, expatriate adjustment, and expatriate performance through a mechanism taking into account the moderating roles of cultural intelligence and socialization experience.

The sample was collected from 156 expatriate managers of Taiwanese multinational company (MNC) subsidiaries operating in China. Structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 21 and hierarchical regression in SPSS 19 were used to test eight research hypotheses.

The SEM results indicated that transformational leadership and social support make significant contributions to expatriate adjustment and performance. The moderating roles of socialization experience and cultural intelligence were also confirmed in this study.

This study extends a theoretical model of transformational leadership and social support to examine expatriate adjustment and performance based on social learning and social exchange theories. Using a specific Chinese context, the current paper highlights the value and necessity of cross‐cultural adjustment for successful expatriation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate leadership competencies of expatriate managers working within the UAE and identify if these competencies are unique from those needed in their home country. Additionally, the paper aims to identify how new competencies expatriate leaders have developed while in their current position and how this enhances their ability to better manage staff in the UAE. Leadership competencies are skills and behaviors that contribute to enhanced performance. While some leadership competencies are essential to all firms, some distinctive leadership attributes may be particularly relevant to organizations possessing a large expatriate community.

Personal interviews and stratified sampling were used to examine the qualities and skills relating to expatriate managers’ success in leading UAE organizations. The research design did not differentiate between the origins and ethnicities of the leaders. The leaders, whether American, European, Indo-Pakistani or Asian, were treated as one entity.

Factors such as communication ability, team building qualities and ability to handle local nationals were found to have a significant effect on expatriate adjustment and success in managing UAE organizations.

By investigating specific competencies and skills that expatriate managers need to lead organizations in the UAE and the broader Gulf region, the study informs organizations on how they can better identify and develop leadership skills that lead to enhanced performance.

The study focuses on leadership competencies within the expatriate community of the UAE.

Educational researchers have long experienced increasing rates of Nigerians educated to the graduate levels going overseas as a way to leave Nigeria. For the last 25 years, research has shown a rapid increase in the brain-drain syndrome in Nigeria (Akomas, 2006; Oji, 2005). From the history of expatriate Nigerians, research showed that the return rate of Nigerians who studied and obtained Ph.D.s in foreign countries shares a noticeable portion of the university educational outcomes and cannot be ignored. Pires, Kassimir and Brhane (1999), Oji (2005), West (2005), and Akomas (2006) agreed that brain-drain syndrome in Nigeria is increasing. Many Nigerian professors teaching in the universities in Nigeria have either gone overseas or are looking for ways to leave the country for greener pastures (West, 2005). In South Africa, one would find hundreds of Nigerian professors educating South Africans (West, 2005). Many are in Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and many more places beyond the shores of Nigeria (West, 2005). Therefore, both educational leaders in the universities in Nigeria, in general, and Niger Delta region, in particular, and expatriate Nigerians educated to the graduate levels play a substantial role in the country's educational leadership effectiveness and success.

This monograph reports and compares “desirable” leadership traits, and leadership traits actual exhibited by managers and supervisors as defined by responses on the original English and a Chinese language translation of the Ohio State University leadership behaviour description questionnaire XII (LBDQ XII). From anecdotal evidence and personal experience, the researcher found considerable difficulty in transferring research results from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to useful practice in the interior of China and performed this study in an attempt to gain understanding for management training courses. Data was collected for 220 managers and supervisors in two hotels in the interior of China. Both expatriate and indigenous Chinese managers were included. All supervisors were Chinese. A significant (p < 0.05) difference between Chinese and non‐Chinese expatriates was observed for factor: Tolerance of Freedom, interestingly, with the Chinese managers indicating more tolerance of freedom than the expatriate managers. Nonetheless, Chinese supervisors believed the ideal manager should be even more tolerant of freedom than their managers (p < 0.01).

As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

Retailers have demonstrated mixed results during international expansions. However, home market saturation and the economic climate are forcing more and more retailers to look beyond their borders for revenue. A critical participant in the internationalizing effort is the expatriate manager. Unfortunately the literature is unclear and at times conflicted over how to select and prepare expatriate management for their leadership role. Therefore, this study was designed with the purpose of uncovering various factors which may lead to expatriate retail management success.

Based on the lack of unanimity in the literature this study adopted a qualitative research methodology in order to develop some consensus regarding successful expatriate leadership attributes. Grounded theory was employed utilizing extensive in-depth interviews as the primary data gathering and analysis tools.

A multi-dimensional construct emerged from the data requiring all dimensions to be utilized for a successful retail expatriate assignment. The construct of “Universal Leadership”, is proposed as formative, comprised of reflective sub-dimensions; Ability, Adaptability, Ambassadorship, and Awareness (Self), which we refer to as the Four A's, for successful expatriate management assignments. Several propositions are put forward as suggestions for future research in the use of the universal leadership model for both selection and training of retail expatriate managers.

The study develops a theoretical platform for expatriate leadership success allowing for cultural and business variation. Awareness is introduced as a critical attribute in achieving success as an expatriate success. The universal leadership model proposes attributes beneficial for training and also selection which is critically under examined in the literature.

Selection and training of expatriates emphasizes the importance of respecting and adapting to local cultural norms. However, even when motivated to modify their behavior, expatriates tend to act in ways which transgress host country cultural norms. While such transgressions can harm working relationships between expatriate manager and host country nationals (HCNs), this is not an inevitable outcome. The purpose of this paper is to apply the social psychological construct of forbearance to create a model which considers how transgression severity, responsibility attributions made by the HCN, empathy, and expatriate manager reputation influence HCN forbearance in the face of culturally inappropriate leadership behaviors.

This is a conceptual paper, which proposes forbearance as a process which can reduce dysfunctional outcomes on working relationships resulting from culturally inappropriate behaviors by expatriate managers.

The author argues that differences between expatriate and host country implicit leadership theories influence HCN attributions for culturally inappropriate leadership behaviors. These attributions, together with expatriate reputation, HCN empathy, and the severity of the cultural transgression, will determine the extent to which HCNs are likely to exercise forbearance.

The paper suggests several important lines of research into the initial establishment of an effective working relationship between expatriate and HCN. Suggestions for further elaboration and testing of the model are also provided.

The model points to important processes (e.g. establishing incoming expatriate’s reputation, managing attributions, and facilitating empathy) which have the potential to reduce difficulties early in the assignment.

Much research into expatriate adjustment focuses on the expatriate. This paper adopts the perspective of the HCN, providing a framework for better understanding perceptual and attributional processes influencing the relationship.