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International relocation for work reasons implies uncertainty and stress, resulting in high expatriate failure rates. Hence, organizations should consider employee’s international relocation mobility readiness (IRMR) in selection processes. The purpose of this paper is to identify personal as well as social antecedents of IRMR.

Data were gathered by an online survey (n=273 German employees) and analyzed using SEM.

SEM results indicate that attitudinal (boundaryless mindset), biographical (previous international work experience) and social variables (the perceived social endorsement of international relocation mobility) are positively related to IRMR. The positive relationship between personality variables (uncertainty tolerance, proactive personality) and IRMR is mediated by boundaryless mindset.

The sampling method applied limits the generalization of the results.

Results can be applied in personnel selection to find employees with a strong IRMR. Thus, expatriate failure rates could be reduced.

This is the first study that addressed personal as well as social antecedents of IRMR.

Employees’ readiness to relocate abroad plays a crucial role for the success or failure of expatriate assignments. Hence, companies should consider employees’ international relocation mobility readiness (IRMR) when selecting candidates for international postings. However, past research has conceptualized and measured IRMR heterogeneously, hampering the interpretation and comparability of IRMR research results. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a new conceptualization of IRMR and to give recommendations for its measurement.

Based on the business, psychological and sociological literature, this paper reviews and categorizes how IRMR has been conceptualized and measured. To structure the findings, a directed content analysis was applied. The sample comprises 88 journal articles.

The results reveal that studies seldom provide a conceptualization of IRMR. While the authors often find a misfit between the studies’ explicit conceptualization and the actual measurement of IRMR, most scales actually measure willingness (i.e. usually a predictor of risky and spontaneous behavior).

Based on the results and the Rubicon model of action phases (Heckhausen and Gollwitzer, 1987), the authors recommend future research to conceptualize IRMR as a dynamic multidimensional construct, covering the different phases of an individual’s decision to relocate internationally. Future, IRMR measurements should also cover the complexity of IRMR, e.g. regarding specific location characteristics.

Companies should consider the whole decision-making process regarding IRMR to apply specific measures at the best possible time.

This paper investigates IRMR scales according to their scientific validity and hence provides the basic ground for future scale development studies.

Companies target globally mobile workers and face the war for talent, while individuals are more reluctant to engage in global mobility. This scenario led us to propose a model to understand the individuals' decision process to engage in global mobility.

Building on the self-determination theory, the theory of planned behavior and the literature on decisions for global mobility, the authors propose mechanisms through which psychological variables and assignments' factual and perceived contextual aspects (directly or indirectly) explain the decision to engage or not in global mobility.

This study offers a conceptual model with the authors' novel propositions to explain individuals' decision to engage in global mobility.

The model provides a more comprehensive explanation of the individuals' decision-making process to engage in global mobility than previous models and potentially yields more effective organizational practices to attract both well-established and emerging phenomena of globally mobile workers.

The purpose of this study is to identify what (de)motivates millennial students from undertaking mobility upon graduation and whether this depends on gender, region of origin, prior work experience, level of studies, or international mindset and how. The paper provides insights on the preferred length of mobility and the most (un)attractive regions.

The sample consists of 1,001 millennial students from 77 countries. Data from a quantitative self-reported survey were analysed employing exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory data analyses.

Factors that motivate mobility are personal development, learning about foreign cultures and the opportunity to travel and those that demotivate are a preference for short-term assignments, unwillingness of family to move and disruption of home country life. Factors differ by region, gender, level of current studies and the student's international mindset.

The cohort included only students pursuing a business or technical education. A willingness to accept an international assignment may not necessarily translate into accepting an international assignment due to the effect of the attitude–behaviour gap. The authors do not aim to generalise on the basis of the results since the sample was fairly disproportionate in terms of world regions. We do, however, invite further studies to treat ours as potential input for new and emerging studies of either a quantitative or qualitative nature.

Due to a strong attachment to home, short-term assignments are preferred. Salary and financial benefits remain hygienic factors and motivating factors remain on the “soft” side. Motivating millennials to engage in mobility requires an individualised approach, dependent on region of origin, gender, the level of education, work experience and international mindset.

This study indicates that the factors that (de)motivate millennial students to engage in international assignments differ on the basis of various socio-demographic variables.

The International Human Resource Management literature has paid less attention to the selection of expatriates and the decision-making criteria with regard to such selection, than to issues relating to expatriates’ role, performance, adjustment, success, and failure. Yet, before expatriates commence their assignments, they need to be selected. The purpose of this book chapter is to provide an overview of issues related specifically to expatriate selection. In particular, the chapter traces the chronological development of selection over the last five decades or so, from prior to 1970 until present. The chapter subsequently identifies five expatriate selection criteria that have been applied in regard to traditional international assignments, but are also relevant to alternative assignments.

We begin by reviewing expatriate selection historically and its position within expatriate management based on changing business environments. Then, drawing from over five decades of literature on international assignments, we identify and discuss five organizational, individual, and contextual level criteria for selecting expatriates.

Emphasis on different issues tends to characterize expatriate selection during the various decades since the literature has taken up the topic. The chapter describes those issues, following a chronological perspective. In addition, the chapter organizes the various selection criteria in five clusters: organization philosophy, technical competence, relational abilities, personal characteristics, and spouse and family situation.

While there are studies on expatriate selection, there is more to be understood with regard to the topic. Provided all other expatriation phases are subsequent, if selection is not understood in detail, the foundations of studying phases and processes that take place once expatriates are selected may not be sound. While the scholarly conversations of other expatriate-related issues should continue, the international human resource management literature can absorb more analyses on selection. A better understanding of expatriate selection will assist its better management. The chapter provides a basis for human resource management professionals to be able to map the various criteria for selection, and decide, under particular circumstances, which ones to prioritize and why.

The chapter brings clarity to a topic that has remained less researched when compared to other areas of interest related to expatriates and their international assignments by tracing the historical development of this important phase of the expatriation process. In addition, the chapter organizes a number of selection criteria along five core areas and discusses each of them to gain insights that help explain expatriate selection in greater detail.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine job embeddedness as antecedent of job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) of expatriates.

In total, 194 expatriates from 39 nationalities were recruited through various expatriate organizations, which provided expatriate groups they had access to with a link to the online survey in English. To test the hypotheses, the author used bivariate analyses and multivariate regressions were calculated to control for alternative explanations.

As hypothesized, community embeddedness was positively related to job performance and both organizational embeddedness and community embeddedness were positively related to OCBs. Moreover, community embeddedness and organizational embeddedness showed to be positively related. In addition, organizational embeddedness partially mediated the positive relationship between community embeddedness and job performance for organizational expatriates (moderated mediation) as well as the positive relationship between community embeddedness and OCBs.

This is one of the first study to address the differential effects of organizational and community embeddedness on job performance in an expatriation context.

Corporate business activities can require expatriates to relocate to dangerous countries. Applying the expectancy value theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in female and male expatriates in their relocation willingness to dangerous countries as a function of sensation seeking. The authors further examine money orientation as a moderator of the effects of sensation seeking.

The sample is comprised of 148 expatriates currently residing in safe host countries. The authors build and examine a moderated mediation model using the PROCESS tool.

The results show that male expatriates are more sensation seeking than female expatriates. Further, the results indicate a positive main effect of sensation seeking on relocation willingness to dangerous countries. Most importantly, sensation seeking was found to mediate the effects of gender on relocation willingness. Accordingly, male expatriates are more willing to relocate to dangerous countries due to higher sensation seeking. Money orientation was not found to interact with sensation seeking.

The authors analyzed cross-sectional data. Future studies are encouraged to use multi-wave research designs and to examine further predictors, as well as mediators and moderators of relocation willingness to dangerous countries. Another limitation is the low number of organizational expatriates in the sample.

The study provides implications for the process of selecting eligible individuals who are willing to relocate to dangerous countries.

The study is among the first research endeavors to investigate antecedents of expatriates’ relocation willingness to dangerous countries. The authors also introduce the sensation seeking construct to the literature on expatriation management.

Repatriation continues to be a current challenge for many international firms. While this topic has received only limited attention in literature in the past, it has aroused an increased academic interest since the 2000s. Until now, however, thorough analyses of advancements in this field, which go beyond a pure content-related review, are still scarce in research. To address this gap, this study provides a systematic and comprehensive literature review of repatriation from an ecological systems perspective. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to analyze where and when repatriation research has been published, what aspects (e.g. topics, theories, and contexts) have been considered in the repatriation literature, and how the research has been conducted (e.g. employed methodologies). Based on the findings implications for future research are developed.

This study is based on a systematic literature review of 96 peer-reviewed articles from 1973 to 2016.

The results of the study reveal that repatriation has found its way into journals of different disciplines. By employing an ecological systems theoretical perspective, the study shows that research on repatriation covers a broad set of ecological systems to explain repatriation outcomes. Quantitative approaches are fairly prominent in repatriation research, whereas the use of qualitative approaches has increased lately. Mixed-methods approaches, however, are still scarce in the repatriation literature. Moreover, the results outline that the majority of scholars collected data on the individual level. With regard to methodological rigor (both design and analysis), a steady use of linear regression modeling in quantitative articles was found, whereas more sophisticated methodological approaches such as structural equation modeling and longitudinal studies have only recently found their way into repatriation research. Finally, by considering that the expatriate literature addresses a variety of types of expatriation, this study highlights that research on repatriation should differentiate more thoroughly between types of repatriates to provide target-group-oriented recommendations and to deepen the understanding of the repatriation phenomenon.

This study contributes to the repatriation research in several ways. First, it provides a systematic analysis of the repatriation literature from an ecological systems theoretical lens. By combining this content-related analysis with an investigation of methodological issues, the study outlines which ecological systems have been covered in the literature on repatriation, where the strengths and weaknesses of this literature stream lay, and in which direction future avenues of research should move. Moreover, the study highlights which methodological shortcomings are still existent in the repatriation literature and shows that a differentiated viewpoint on repatriates like in the expatriation literature is still in an embryonic stage in repatriation research. Finally, it contributes to the repatriation research by deducing valuable recommendations for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which a destination's security level affects the relationship between personality traits and individuals' expatriation willingness.

The authors apply an experimental vignette methodology using a 2 × 1 between subjects-design with two destinations characterized by different security levels (dangerous vs. safe) among 278 participants (students and employees). Partial least squares multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) was employed to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that different personality variables appear to impact individuals' expatriation willingness depending on the security level of a destination: emotionality and conscientiousness predicted expatriation willingness to dangerous environments, whereas openness to experience predicted expatriation willingness to safe environments. The personality traits of honesty–humility, extraversion and agreeableness were not found to influence expatriation willingness in either scenario.

The study discusses a set of practical recommendations for the selection and the management of eligible individuals who are willing to expatriate to dangerous locations.

The study is among the first to examine the influence of personality on expatriation willingness in safe and dangerous environments at the same time. It advances prior research by providing a more nuanced understanding of the context-specific effects of personality on expatriation willingness.