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The literature has hitherto neglected the influence of specific cities on the decision to work abroad, implicitly treating all locations within countries as similar. Using a boundaryless careers and expatriation perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate a range of specific motives that individuals have when working in London, the British capital.

The results of semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews and a large‐scale quantitative survey shed light on the relative importance of individual drives, career and development motivations, family and partner factors, organizational context, national and city‐specific considerations to come to London.

A range of London‐specific attributes are identified and their importance assessed. A new framework of individual international mobility drivers is developed.

There is limited generalisability of findings of interview studies, especially as “white collar” workers and managers were interviewed. Theoretical contributions consist of the development of a framework for city attractiveness assessment and further insights into international mobility drivers and barriers.

The findings reiterate the importance of individual preparation of international sojourns based on proactive location choice. They also inform city policy considerations and organizational strategies, policies and practices with respect to international mobility.

The paper moves the literature on new international careers and global mobility to go beyond the organizational perspective to assess city attractiveness factors. The paper develops a framework for evaluating city attractiveness and assesses London's “pull factors”. This results in major implications for public policy, organizational resourcing and individual decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what attracts individuals to live in a South East Asian city. It uses a boundaryless career approach that is interested in how people cross-traditional career boundaries, including those related to country and location barriers. Going beyond an individual and organizational view, a more extensive model of location decisions is developed that incorporates broad macro-factor career drivers.

A large-scale qualitative study explored individual, organizational, political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, legal, natural and general drivers to live in the city. The authors interviewed 43 individuals who had moved to the city from abroad, were born in the city and still lived there or who were born in the city but had moved to another foreign city.

Many macro-contextual factors – i.e. day-to-day regulatory stability and transparency, economic growth, friendliness and meritocracy, safety and a good, clean environment – were seen as attractive by all three groups. People who had left the city raised some specific criticism regarding the vibrancy, freedom and creativity of thought.

The study focused on highly skilled individuals who most often had experience in living in different cities to get more reflective views. However, this restricted the generalizability. The findings nuance the understanding of boundaryless careers.

The research expands the normally used attraction factors and develops a broader framework of city attractiveness drivers. The emerging picture can be used by the city administration to manage its global attractiveness while increasing non-regulatory “stickiness” to retain talent.

The research has social implications with respect to cross-border boundaryless careers and talent acquisition, management and retention strategies.

The research expands the macro-contextual discussion and goes beyond the dominant focus on individuals and organizations when investigating boundaryless careers. The study uses an innovative method as it does not only interview foreign expatriates but also two further, more neglected groups: local citizens and individuals who had left the city. It develops an extended model of boundaryless location drivers and develops some exemplary propositions.

The paper seeks to explore the career attitudes, motivations and behaviours of young people in initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Europe.

This exploratory web‐based survey was conducted during the European year for mobility. Drawing on existing research on the motivators of international careers, it explored young people's perceptions of barriers and incentives to mobility.

The study differentiates “natives” (those who did not go abroad) and “boundary crossers” (those who did). Cultural exposure, travel and a desire for adventure are key motivators. Counter‐intuitively, those who chose not to go abroad are significantly more positive about the potential for professional development but are significantly more concerned for personal safety. Some maturational trends are apparent.

The study is limited to a “European‐wide” perspective from a sample, which had access to the web survey. Further research could usefully explore differences in attitude and mobility behaviours within and across specific European countries.

Factors restricting boundary‐crossing behaviour may be rooted in aspects of psychological mobility such as perceived benefits of the experience, self‐confidence and risk aversion. This has practical implications for policy makers and career development for early career foreign didactic experiences where support for placements may need to focus more on psychological mobility, an area currently under‐researched.

This exploratory paper provides data to examine the mobility behaviours among young people in IVET, distinguishing between “natives” and “boundary crossers”. It presents an important attempt to more fully understand the dynamics of mobility attitudes and behaviours among young people.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the human resource management (HRM) policies and practices in consulting firms. The paper specifically investigates whether or not the HRM approaches in these firms mirror the two organisational archetypes of professional partnerships (P2) and manage professional businesses (MPB) found in the professional services sector.

The paper draws on interviews with experienced consultants from a sample of 28 large and medium‐sized consulting firms with a presence in Germany and Switzerland. The paper uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the data.

The findings in the paper show that P2‐type consulting firms take fundamentally different approaches to HRM from MPB‐type firms. In P2‐type consulting firms, HRM is an integral part of the organisational system and is run in practice by consultants, rather than by specialised HR staff. P2‐type firms emphasise the notion of membership of individuals in an organisation tied together by extended socialisation processes and adherence to common values. In contrast, MPB‐type firms exhibit HRM systems with “corporate” features widely used in other large‐scale service organisations.

The paper shows that the organisational archetypes prevalent in professional service firms have significant implications for their HRM systems. Consulting firms' HRM practices and policies should be interpreted in the light of their respective organisational archetype.

The paper concludes that consulting firms should use HRM practices that fit the organisational archetype they embody.

The paper provides systematic evidence on the HRM policies and practices in an important yet under‐researched sector.

There are continuing pressures to improve administrative efficiency in human resource management (HRM). Following the professional and academic literature, proposes “payroll” as an ideal candidate for outsourcing in order to drive costs down.

The research uses a transaction‐cost‐economics perspective to identify efficiency implications of varying governance decisions. Ten distinct payroll activities that account for a generic payroll workflow are identified. Then the costs of carrying out these distinct payroll processes, either market‐ or hierarchy‐based, are analysed in 20 case studies of UK‐based organisations.

While key payroll activities were more costly when outsourced, there were efficiency gains in supplementary activities and lesser investment in IT software and maintenance.

These insights are important for cost‐based make‐or‐buy decisions. Influence factors on governance decisions, however, went beyond considerations of transaction costs, quality and risks to include historical, political and individual rationales. They are depicted in a framework of outsourcing motivations.