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The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of cultural identity change, organizational and social support and cultural distance on repatriation experiences of Indian international assignees.

Semi‐structured interviews were held with 19 Indians on international assignment in The Netherlands and 11 Indians repatriated from The Netherlands. Respondents were asked to reflect on their cultural identity changes and the effects of social support, organizational support and cultural distance between the host and the home country on their international assignment and repatriation experiences. Iterative thematic analyses revealed five central themes: cultural identity independence; knowledge utilization and organizational learning; social network support; global career prospects in the Indian economy; work‐life balance.

Cultural identity changes ranged from low adaptation to Dutch culture and happiness on return to India through to high cultural flexibility and readiness to move to another sojourn. The majority of respondents reported great appreciation by their supervisors and co‐workers and utilization of their knowledge gained in The Netherlands. These factors, in addition to good career prospects and social support from their informal networks, contributed positively to their repatriation experiences.

This study challenges the frequently reported negative repatriation experiences of sojourners from the West.

Aims to increase our understanding of the antecedents of repatriation adjustment. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey among Finnish repatriates in co‐operation with the Finnish union of qualified economics graduates. In the study four different facets of adjustment appeared instead of the three suggested in the literature (i.e. general, work, and interaction adjustment) since the work adjustment dimension appeared to consist of two separate dimensions, here named job adjustment and organisation adjustment. The included antecedent variables explained from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the variance in the adjustment models related to different facets of adjustment. General adjustment was found to be related to the age of the respondent, the length of the assignment, the timing of role negotiations, expatriation adjustment problems, keeping up on events at home and role conflict. With regard to organisation adjustment three antecedent variables were found: timing of role decision, willingness to relocate internationally, and role conflict. Timing of role decision and role discretion appeared as positive correlates of job adjustment, and expatriation adjustment problems and role conflict as negative correlates of interaction adjustment.

This paper examines how informal knowledge transfer processes unfold during the repatriation of Malaysian executives. The goal is to develop a repatriate knowledge transfer process model, explaining the informal process through which repatriates make decisions about and transfer newly acquired knowledge.

Given the unexplored nature of the informal knowledge transfer process the study investigates, this research adopts an exploratory qualitative research approach using interview data from 10 Malaysian corporate executives over a period of 14 months, covering prerepatriation and postrepatriation stages.

The findings indicate that from the repatriates' perspectives, the process flows during repatriates' knowledge transfer depend on the ability and motivation of repatriates, as well as their opportunity to communicate the newly acquired knowledge to their home country organization. We likewise learned that the repatriates' ability to overcome repatriate adjustment and knowledge transfer challenges is crucial in order for them to proactively initiate informal knowledge transfer.

This research is significant as it will assist current and future expatriates to plan and prepare for repatriation and eventual knowledge transfer. The findings will also be useful to organizations that employ repatriates in preparing action plans for repatriation rather than solely focusing on expatriation.

Research and practice formally argue that expatriates are expected to transfer knowledge from the home country organization to the host country organization. While on assignment, expatriates become exposed to various types of new knowledge during the assignment, setting them up to disseminate this newly acquired knowledge to their home country organization upon repatriation – however, knowledge transfer upon repatriation is largely informal. This paper examines how this informal knowledge transfer process unfolds in the repatriation context over a period of 14 months by qualitatively tracing the experiences of 10 Malaysian corporate executives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of and interaction between (potential) repatriation supporters to develop understanding of how this affects the repatriate experience.

A (single) case study strategy was employed, using a multiple stakeholder approach, involving 21 in-depth interviews in a large UK-based institution with repatriates, home and host HR managers, international human resource (IHR) practitioners and line managers from both home and host locations.

Although line managers, senior managers, family members and third party providers (e.g. relocation agencies, tax advisors) are important for repatriation support, the case study evidence highlights that HR professionals are mainly responsible for the quality of the support delivered by other repatriation supporters. Inadequate support from the headquarters IHR department caused by a lack and unclear information about repatriation procedures and related responsibilities results in insufficient support for home and host HR managers. This negatively impacts repatriates line managers (perceptions of) HR support. Weaknesses in the support chain (headquarter IHR, home and host HR and line managers) are responsible for repatriates (perceived) limited or non-support.

The small size of our sample, the single case study design and the method precludes generalisation of the findings. However, the authors’ “look inside” increased the understanding of repatriation support and in particular the support quality. By linking this information to the knowledge of previous studies on organisational support and the devolution of human resource management, the authors are able to identify several topics future studies in the field of repatriation management.

IHRM policies have to reflect the role of multiple stakeholders including home and host line managers and HR professionals as well as third party providers and assign clear lines of responsibility to provide a transparent and consistent experience. Repatriates family has to be acknowledged as a stakeholder that has a major influence on repatriation success and failure. Excluding partners and children issues from international career policies has to be considered as a serious HR shortcoming. Second, ensuring timely information regarding return positions. Providing debriefing interviews upon repatriation can help to identify future roles within the organisation. Equally important is exit interviews to explore whether the person has completed an assignment within the previous 24 months and whether this experience has contributed to their decision to leave the organisation. Opportunities to ensure repatriates are being considered for positions as part of the talent pool is crucial. Finally, the authors emphasise the need to acknowledge that third party vendors are part of the repatriation process and must be considered in terms of (perceived) organisational support.

This is one of the first studies that highlights the role and interaction of (potential) repatriation supporters. Specifically, this study contributes to addressing three knowledge gaps: it identifies a lack of communication among HR professionals and between them and line managers as a potential source of insufficient organisational support; the findings highlight HR professionals responsibility for supporting line managers and other repatriation supporters in operational repatriation management; and finally, the results support the assumption that HR professionals and line managers own (non-)experience with working abroad might affect the quality of support policies and practices for repatriates.

With increasing interest in overseas business expansion, particularly in the Asia‐Pacific region, expatriate management, including repatriation readjustmenst, has become a critical international human resource development (HRD) issue for multinational enterprises (MNEs). This empirical study therefore aims to investigate the use of HRD interventions relating to training and development for effective readjustment of international managers on repatriation.

The data were collected through a field survey conducted on repatriation experience of international managers from more than five countries, who are working in Singapore.

The study provides valuable insights about repatriation training programmes, training contents, programme duration, delivery modes, and providers of effective training programmes.

HRD professionals and senior executives of MNEs will benefit from the findings of this study in making decisions on effective design and implementation of training and career development programmes.

The findings have significant implications for career development of managers involved in international business operations.

This paper discusses readjustment problems of the repatriating managers and suggests how realistic HRD programmes, mainly based on training, can be developed and implemented for retaining international managers. These findings from the dynamic region of Asia will also help in developing appropriate career development programmes.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is twofold. The first objective is to introduce a multi-stakeholder power perspective to the discourse on repatriate retention, which has, to date, treated issues of career agency without considering whether other stakeholders might be capable of responding constructively. The second objective of the paper is more prescriptive, conjecturing that social media, which has also been completely overlooked by the repatriation literature, has the potential to empower repatriation stakeholders.

Following a review of the literature on repatriate turnover, this paper uses Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan's (1998) framework on empowerment to examine the nature and significance of powerlessness on the part of key stakeholders in the repatriation process – repatriates, HQ managers, and HQ HR professionals. It uses the same framework to investigate how social media might help to empower these stakeholders.

The analysis finds that social media has the potential to empower repatriation stakeholders in four key ways: first, by triggering expatriates’ awareness of the need to proactively manage different aspects of their own impending repatriation; second, by providing access to supportive mentoring resources; third, by strengthening access to key HR and managerial decision-making arenas; and fourth, by enabling HQ managers and HR representatives to more judiciously direct potentially scarce organizational resources (including their own time) toward key repatriation supports.

Although this conceptual paper has no empirical data, it offers considerable value to the repatriation literature by introducing the topics of power and social media and explaining their relevance to repatriation (and indeed, to the field of international HRM).

Repatriate turnover is problematic, both for repatriates who would have liked to remain with the organization that sent them on assignment, and for the organizations that would like to have retained (and utilized) repatriates’ global competencies. Thus, the main practical implication of this paper is that it offers an innovative contemporary solution (e.g. the use of social media) to this problem of repatriate turnover.

The paper demonstrates that the topic of power has been completely neglected by the repatriation literature. Similarly, the topic of social media, has also been completely overlooked by the repatriation literature. This paper introduces these two topics to the repatriation literature, and, in so doing, broadens the understanding of constraints on repatriate agency as a means of repatriate retention, and offers innovative contemporary solutions (e.g. social media).

The purpose of this exploratory, empirical study is to gain insight into repatriation experiences and repatriate turnover intention of employees from India and The Netherlands who either were or had been on international assignments in the respective countries.

Interviews were conducted with 25 Dutch and 30 Indian international assignees (IAs) and repatriates in both India and The Netherlands. Thematic analysis resulted in four themes: met and unmet expectations of career advancement opportunities; knowledge transfer and labour marketability; economic growth versus economic recession and alternative employment opportunities; and boundaryless careers: adventure and entrepreneurship.

Repatriate expectations about the use of knowledge, skills and abilities gained in the host country moderate the relationship between the macro-economic situation of the home country and repatriate attrition/retention, such that met expectations of Indian respondents decreased their intention to leave the organisation, even in a conducive macro-economic context with ample alternative employment opportunities. Unmet expectations of Dutch respondents increased their intention to leave the organisation, even in an unfavourable macro-economic context with few alternative employment opportunities.

The sample of Indian and Dutch IAs and repatriates may limit generalisation of the findings to samples from other countries with distinct cultural contexts and macro-economic conditions.

Global organisations that set realistic expectations about re-entry career opportunities for repatriates, facilitate knowledge transfer after repatriation, and adequately respond to boundaryless career ambitions of repatriates, can reduce repatriate turnover intention and attrition.

This study shows that repatriate attrition versus retention is embedded in the macro-economic context of the home country, leading to three types of career mobility upon completion of an international assignment: intra-organisational mobility; organisational boundary-crossing; and geographical boundary crossing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an examination of Black et al.’s theoretical framework of repatriation adjustment as it relates to career planning for employees with international work experience.

The approach combines narrative with argument and analysis.

This paper expands on re‐entry adjustment to include additional research on repatriation, and discusses the utility of these theoretical propositions for individual and organizational career planning.

Suggestions for future research include repatriation strategies, incorporating concepts from the literature on other life transitions, and the importance of recognizing psychological variables in work adjustment.

Implications for career development are also discussed to help employees and career counsellors understand the impact of working internationally and to help organizations design ways to help employees integrate their expertise and experience through proactive and supportive repatriation practices.

Although top‐down interventions have the potential to reduce repatriate turnover, most organizations have not been very accommodating and repatriate turnover continues to remain high. Drawing from career transitions theory and the protean perspective of career management, this paper proposes a model of repatriate proactivity as an alternate approach. A “successful” repatriation transition outcome is defined as one in which, upon return, the repatriate: gains access to a job which recognizes any newly acquired international competencies; experiences minimal cross‐cultural re‐adjustment difficulties; and reports low turnover intentions. Individual antecedents are posited to include proactive repatriation behaviors and the personality characteristics which are suggested to drive the use of these behaviors. The strength/weakness of the repatriation situation is posited to moderate the relationship between personality and the emergence of proactive repatriation behaviors. Practical and theoretical implications for both the repatriation problem, and the career development literature in general, are discussed.

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.