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This qualitative study explores how trailing spouses form their relationships before and after a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic and what patterns can be observed. It explores their significant relationships with friends and extended family, focusing on dynamics and change.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with seven trailing spouses in Malaysia: before the pandemic, in the beginning and at the end of the first year of the pandemic. The authors used longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis (LIPA).

Being aware of the limits of resources emerged as a key factor in how trailing spouses develop and maintain relationships with friends and extended family. The fact that the pandemic changed the dynamics of their social networks illuminates how crucial these relationships or their absence are in their adjustment and readjustment process. Children play a significant role in these relationships.

Comparative research into the friendships and relationships of different groups of trailing spouses in various locations could capture more specificity of the relationship dynamics.

The explored patterns can promote a better understanding of the relationship dynamics of trailing spouses' networks, which can, in turn, support and facilitate both adjustment and repatriation processes. They can help explain how and what kind of social networks best support trailing spouse transition during a time of crisis or adjustment. These findings could be incorporated into intercultural training programs.

No current study that the authors know of has explored trailing spouses' relationship dynamics in a longitudinal study before and during a crisis.

The goals of this review are to identify key theories, constructs and themes in the international business travel (IBT) literature and to propose a model based on findings, theories and constructs drawn from adjacent research literature.

The authors reviewed the business travel (BT) literature to identify conceptual and empirical articles on IBT published from 1990 to 2022. Only 53 publications were suitable for review. The authors reviewed them using an open coding system.

The IBT literature is dispersed across several disciplines that use different methods, focus on different aspects of travel and emphasize different positive and negative outcomes that IBT engenders. The publications employed a diverse range of methods, including review and conceptual (11), quantitative (28) and qualitative methods (14). The samples were diverse in country, age, marital status and tenure. Many publications were descriptive and exploratory. The few that based their research on theory focused on two stress theories: Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory.

Experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to reduce the causal ambiguity of this body of mostly correlational and cross-sectional research. The authors discuss the impact of emerging advances in virtual global communication technology on the future of IBT.

More research is needed on positive aspects of IBT. Human resource (HR) people should be aware of these issues and are encouraged to decrease the deleterious aspects of the international trips and increase the positive ones.

Increasing well-being of international business travelers is important for the travelers, their families and the organization.

This is the first IBT review focused on the theoretical underpinnings of research in the field. The authors offer a model for IBT and introduce adjustment and performance as important constructs in IBT research. The authors encompass crossover theory to add the reciprocal impact of travelers and spouses and label IBT a “double-edge sword” because it arouses both positive and negative outcomes.

Ineffective expatriate performance and premature returns have been found to relate primarily to an inability to adjust to the foreign environment rather than a lack of technical competence. Research has identified three dimensions of expatriate adjustment: adjustment to work, adjustment to interactions with people in the foreign country and general adjustment to the culture and living conditions. Five major factors that have been found to influence these dimensions of adjustment and research using these factors provides a framework to help international firms understand and take a more active role in facilitating expatriate adjustment.

This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of Tunisian self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) for social and organizational support that they experienced during their international expatriation assignment in a host country.

This study is a qualitative research. The data were collected from Tunisian Expatriates through semi-structured interviews.

This study has revealed diverse some interesting insights about the lived experiences of Tunisian SIEs about the support which they received from their family members, social network and members of the host-country organization. This study has also introduced a scale that can be used for measuring the level of social and organizational support received by SIEs.

This study has offered some implications for the researchers and professionals to advance research and practice to regulate the lived experiences of SIEs.

This study has highlighted the lived experiences of SIEs for social and organizational support in the Tunisian context representing the collectivist Muslim society.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between cross-cultural adjustment and stress of expatriate employees with families in a multinational corporation and identify common stressors reported during international transitions.

This study utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods through an online survey based tool. The CernySmith Assessment captured the statistical measures of objective adjustment scales along with written in, subjective stressor responses from a sample of expatriates.

Overall subjective stress level was negatively correlated with all five objective adjustment domains (organizational, cultural, relational, behavioral, and personal). Seven stressor categories (cultural, occupational, relational, historical, crisis, spiritual, physical) demonstrated statistically significant negative relationships with overall adjustment. Regression analysis indicated expatriate adjustment was predicted by spiritual, occupational, and support stressors. Write-in stressor responses provided specific expressions of individual stress challenges, strains, and hassles that support predicted relations according to the Family Adaptation and Adjustment Response model.

This study provides a snapshot of objective adjustment interacting with subjective stress for expatriate employees from a single international organization during a specific time period.

These findings provide insights to organizations and human resource development professionals as well as to expatriates and their families on how stress impacts expatriate adjustment. It also highlights the need for support mechanisms to ease transitions and reduce stressors.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new framework for assessing the human resource strategy for international assignment (IA) of managers.

The approach posits the construct of emotional intelligence (EI) as a critical predictor for intercultural adjustment thereby leading to success. A theoretical model and the respective preliminary empirical test of a series of hypotheses pertaining to the relationships between several dimensions of EI, their impact on cross‐cultural adjustment and success of international managers overseas assignments, is presented. Analyses is based on cross sectional data of 67 cases (based on questionnaires), and on 39 cases with rectangular data where both supervisory input and questionnaires were used.

A significant correlation was found between the interpersonal emotional component and specific performance. Thus the capacities of empathy, social responsibility and social relations may predict better performance in the specific characters of IA. Moreover, the correlation between EI and adjustment dimensions showed significantly higher correlations; while cultural adjustment is not correlated with any EI dimensions, interaction fit correlates with all the EI dimensions except for stress management; adjustment at the work place was only correlated with intrapersonal emotional component. The correlation between adjustment variables and success variables shows that cultural adjustment is positively correlated with satisfaction among global managers. Adjustment at work correlates negatively with the wish to terminate the assignment. In other words, those who adjust less well to work show greater interest in terminating their assignment.

Findings are based on the self‐reported questionnaires and should be treated with caution due to the possibilities of “method‐variance”. The findings are based on a small sample of international assigned managers operating within the Latin American theatre.

It is proposed that EI assessment be used in the selection of internationally assigned managers, in addition to the traditional selection criteria in order to improve the predictive ness of the assignee success.

The use of soft skills rather than hard skills as part of the selection decision of expatriates or any other internationally assigned professionals was long debated. In this study, for the first time, EI scores were used to predict cultural adjustment and subsequence success for managers.

This paper aims to analyze the repatriation adjustment process of international employees in the Spanish context. The paper also aims to test the applicability of Black et al.'s repatriation adjustment model for Spanish repatriates.

The paper reports on empirical quantitative research, based on data from 124 Spanish repatriates. Multiple regression analysis and factor analysis are used to test the hypotheses of the study.

The findings provide evidence for some of the relations proposed in the model but they do not support the model as a whole. The paper questions the existence of the different dimensions of expectations/adjustment and the importance of some of the factors included in the model.

The sample is not very large; some bias could appear as only repatriates who continue working in their companies were questioned. Future research should conduct longitudinal studies.

The study provides evidence of the relevance of facilitating repatriates' adjustment, as it affects their performance. The study also shows that some variables can facilitate the process. In particular, having a mentor and frequent communication with home during the expatriation has been found to help the repatriates to create accurate expectations, which, in turn, affect their general adjustment. Social capacity and the fact that the repatriates had not adjusted completely overseas also facilitate readjustment. Finally, work autonomy on return and social status have been found to positively affect work adjustment.

The paper contributes to the literature by examining the repatriation model of Black et al. that has not been thoroughly analyzed before wither as a whole regarding its applicability to non‐Anglo‐Saxon countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perception of the work‐family interface in an expatriation context. Furthermore, potential antecedents of work‐family enrichment and work‐family conflict in the work as well as in the family domain are identified and potential gender differences in perceptions sought.

An exploratory approach was adopted. The authors conducted in‐depth interviews with 15 expatriates and repatriates that were analysed using content analysis.

Work‐to‐family conflict was perceived as a time‐based conflict, whereas family‐to‐work conflict was perceived as an energy‐based conflict. Work‐family enrichment (i.e. work‐to‐family; family‐to‐work) was perceived as a transfer of skills and mood. Furthermore, at least in an expatriation context, the work‐family interface is reflected in more reciprocal influences than are currently presented in existing concepts. In total, four potential antecedents of work‐family interaction were identified: social support at work; development opportunities at work; family social support; and family adjustment. Finally, gender differences in the perception of the work‐family interface could be revealed.

First, the interviews were analysed solely by one person; consequently, inter‐rater‐reliability could not be tested. Second, a direct relationship between each potential antecedent and work‐family interaction can only be hypothesized.

The findings enable companies to implement support strategies that foster a positive interaction between the work and the family domain which, in turn, will enhance expatriation success.

The study provides one of the first exploratory examinations of the perception of the complete work‐family interface in an expatriation context. Furthermore, this is one of the few studies that include female and male international assignees in the sample and therefore can give a balanced perspective of the work‐family interface among male and female assignees.

Drawing on social learning theory (SLT), this study aims to investigate how previous cross-cultural work experience influences individual adjustment in a foreign environment over time. For this purpose, the authors study foreign service employees who are characterized by permanent high mobility and frequent rotations.

Two cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2011 (analytical sample N = 1,097) and 2019 (analytical sample N = 1,431) amongst German Foreign Service (GFS) employees are used to analyse employees' adjustment, measured by self-perceived quality of life (QOL) and its development over time based on four time points. Locational adjustment trajectories serve as robustness checks.

Younger and therefore less experienced employees fit J-shaped patterns of adjustment, while more experienced employees show rather flat adjustment curves. Accordingly, work experience matters and “one curve fits all” approaches do not suffice to explain adjustment over time. Moreover, neither more nor less experienced employees experienced U-trajectories as proposed by previous literature on business expatriates.

The study findings are based on cross-sectional surveys, but longitudinal designs should be preferred in future research.

Sending institutions may develop special support systems for inexperienced expatriates prior to departure to weaken the negative impacts of culture shock.

Existing literature only sparsely analysed adjustment and QOL for foreign service employees/diplomats so far. To the authors’ knowledge, no study analysed trajectories of adjustment over time for this population. This study profits from the analysis across two surveys. Both samples benefit from a high diversity, among others, regarding gender, age, education and host countries.