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Besides ensuring traditional project objectives, expatriate construction professionals (EXCPs) working on international projects face challenges adapting to unfamiliar environments with varying construction standards, work practices and cultural values. This puts them at a high risk of job burnout. Thus, this study aims to investigate the antecedents and outcomes of EXCPs' job burnout in the international construction industry.

Based on the Job demands-resource model (JD-R), a theoretical framework was developed. Industry-specific stressors and expatriate management practices were identified using a literature review and interviews. The authors then used a questionnaire survey to collect data from Chinese EXCPs. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were then utilized to test hypotheses.

The findings indicate that early-career EXCPs experience the most severe levels of job burnout. The paths analysis proved the direct and indirect mitigating effects of expatriate management practices on job burnout, and EXCP's job burnout was associated with poor job performance and decreased intention to stay in the international assignment.

While prior research has explored job burnout among construction professionals working on domestic projects, little attention has been given to EXCPs and their unique challenges. This study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by offering a unique perspective on the antecedents and outcomes of job burnout among EXCPs in international contexts and presents a significant contribution to understanding and addressing occupational health issues faced by EXCPs.

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 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 paper aims to propose an expatriate psychological adjustment model that postulates expatriate mental health as an antecedent to psychological adjustment. It presents novel predeparture and post-arrival international human resource management (IHRM) expatriate management mental health supportive interventions.

This paper critically reviews theoretical frameworks in the IHRM domain around expatriate psychological adjustments such as the U-Curve Adjustment Theory (Lysgaard, 1995), the Framework of International Adjustment (Black et al., 1991), the Dimensions of Expatriate Adjustment (Haslberger et al., 2013) and the Stress Outcome Model (Bader and Berg, 2014), in a quest to develop a new conceptual framework. This study presents a new conceptual framework along with propositions to take into consideration the relationship between mental health and expatriates' psychological adjustment.

The findings suggest that mental health is an antecedent paramount to psychological adjustment. The paper proposes mental health-supportive IHRM expatriate management interventions to address the potential failure of expatriates' psychological adjustment. The authors elaborate on the IHRM expatriate management policies and practices at the home and host country to ensure the mental health of company-assigned expatriates sent on international assignments.

The novel conceptual framework underpins mental health as the antecedent paramount to expatriate adjustment, taking into consid eration the elevated stress of situational events such as COVID-19, which had previously not received substantive formal consideration by research scholars in the IHRM domain. The conceptual framework encourages the inclusion of mental health as an antecedent in future research.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between individual-level psychological resources and team resilience in the context of expatriate project management teams. It seeks to understand how personal psychological resources contribute to team resilience and explore the dynamic evolution mechanism of team resilience. The goal is to enhance team resilience among expatriates in a BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible) world, where organizations face volatile and uncertain conditions.

An online survey was applied for data collection, and 315 valid samples from Chinese expatriates in international construction projects were utilized for data analysis. A structural equation model (SEM) examines the relationships between personal psychological resources and team resilience. The study identifies five psychological factors influencing team resilience: Employee Resilience, Cross-cultural Adjustment, Self-efficacy, Social Support, and Team Climate. The hypothesized relationships are validated through the SEM analysis. Additionally, a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is constructed to explore the dynamic mechanism of team resilience formation based on the results of the SEM.

The SEM analysis confirms that employee resilience, cross-cultural adjustment, and team climate positively impact team resilience. Social support and self-efficacy also have positive effects on team climate. Moreover, team climate is found to fully mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and team resilience, as well as between social support and team resilience. The FCM model provides further insights into the dynamic evolution of team resilience, highlighting the varying impact effects of antecedents during the team resilience development process and the effectiveness of different combinations of intervention strategies.

This study contributes to understanding team resilience by identifying the psychological factors influencing team resilience in expatriate project management teams. The findings emphasize the importance of social support and team climate in promoting team resilience. Interventions targeting team climate are found to facilitate the rapid development of team resilience. In contrast, interventions for social support are necessary for sustainable, long-term high levels of team resilience. Based on the dynamic simulation results, strategies for cultivating team resilience through external intervention and internal adjustment are proposed, focusing on social support and team climate. Implementing these strategies can enhance project management team resilience and improve the core competitiveness of contractors in the BANI era.

Integrating anxiety and uncertainty management (AUM) theory and theory of organizing, this study aims to contribute to the knowledge management literature by examining the interdependent and bidirectional nature of knowledge transfer between expatriates and host country nationals (HCNs). Specifically, the authors investigate how receivers’ cognitive response to senders’ behaviors during their interactions becomes an important conduit between senders’ behaviors and the successful transfer of knowledge.

The authors used the actor partner interdependence model to analyze data from 107 expatriate-HCN dyads. The authors collected the responses of these expatriate-HCN dyads in Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and India.

Receivers’ interaction anxiety and uncertainty, as a response to senders’ relationship building behaviors, mediate the relationship between senders’ relationship building behaviors and successful knowledge transfer. When senders are expatriates, senders’ communication patience and relationship building behaviors interact to reduce the direct and indirect effects of both receivers’ interaction anxiety and uncertainty. However, when senders are HCNs, the moderation and moderated mediation models are not supported.

The study contributes to the knowledge management literature by investigating knowledge transfer between expatriates and HCNs using an interpersonal cross-cultural communication lens. The authors make refinements to AUM theory by going beyond the sender role to highlighting the interdependence between senders and receivers in the management of anxiety and uncertainty which, in turn, influences the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication. The study is also unique in that the authors underscore an important yet understudied construct, communication patience, in the successful transfer of knowledge.

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.

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model explicating the development of expatriate social capital and its influence on expatriate effectiveness in terms of knowledge transfer and adjustment. Drawing upon social capital theory and weak tie theory, we elucidate the process through which expatriate social capital facilitates expatriate knowledge transfer and adjustment via greater access of role information and social support.

This study reviews and distills research on expatriate social capital development and proposes a conceptual model of expatriate effectiveness and suggests potential research avenues for global mobility scholars.

This study contributes to the understanding of the development of expatriate social capital in the host country and its impacts on expatriate effectiveness as a process. With regard to expatriates’ social capital accumulation, this study also highlights the important but less-known role of accompanying spouse/family members as expatriates’ weak tie enablers. We articulate a framework that outlines the sources of social capital for expatriates and the processes through which social capital transmits (via expatriates’ access to role information and social support) and then enhances expatriate effectiveness. This conceptual model aims to establish a basic “roadmap” for use by practitioners and researchers.

Before the proposed conceptual model can be theoretically refined or extended by future research, its veracity needs to be tested empirically. Although we do not incorporate “time,” “personal characteristics” and “context” in our model, we recognize their potential importance and urge future researchers to incorporate them in studying the role of social capital on expatriate effectiveness.

A conceptual model is presented that enables multinational corporations (MNCs) to map their current (and future) strategies to enhance expatriate effectiveness by further strengthening the expatriate social capital.

Drawing upon social capital theory and weak tie theory, this paper links various sources of expatriate social capital to expatriates’ access to role information and social support in supporting expatriate effectiveness. From this, several avenues of future research are drawn.

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.

This study aims to contribute to the enrichment of the literature by examining the impact of cross-cultural training on expatriates’ adjustment of Nigerian bankers on expatriate assignments in other African countries.

Data on cross-cultural adjustment from expatriate employees in five banks that collectively accounted for over 80 per cent of Nigerian banks with subsidiaries in other African were systematically selected for the investigation. This data was collected quantitatively via a survey instrument. Independent sample t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis were deployed in analyzing the data.

The study found that cross-cultural adjustment varied significantly across the different categories of gender, age, marital status, previous expatriate training, previous expatriate experience, and duration of expatriation. The study concludes that in order to attain higher levels of adjustment African banks and other organizations should provide a more comprehensive cross-cultural training program that mirrors the needs of employees following a detailed needs analysis. Also, the training must be sequential and not a one-off approach.

The literature though still nascent is largely focused on expatriate preparation and adjustment for expatriates moving from Western-to-western contexts and very little exists in the literature on how multinationals from Non-Western contexts like Africa prepare their staff for expatriation and its consequent impact on their adjustment. This study aims to enrich the literature by examining the impact of cross-cultural training on expatriates’ adjustment of Nigerian bankers on expatriate assignments in other African countries.