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Drawing on socio-cognitively orientated leadership studies, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of host country employees’ (HCEs) negative perceptions of successive expatriate leadership by exploring how their memories of shared past experiences affect these perceptions. Contrary to previous work which tends to focus on HCEs’ attitudes towards individual expatriates, the authors shift attention to successive executive expatriate assignments within a single subsidiary.

The paper is based on an intrinsic case study carried out in a Polish subsidiary of an American multinational pharmaceutical company which had been managed by four successive expatriate General Managers and one local executive. The authors draw on interview data with 40 HCEs. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff who had been managed by at least three of the subsidiary’s expatriate leaders.

The authors demonstrate how transference triggered by past experiences with expatriate leaders as well as HCEs’ implicit leadership theories affect HCEs’ negative perceptions of expatriate leadership and lead to the emergence of expatriate leadership schema.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the role of transference and implicit leadership theories in HCEs’ perceptions of successive executive expatriate assignments. By focussing on retrospective accounts of HCEs who had been managed by a series of successive expatriate leaders, our study has generated a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of the role of HCEs’ shared past experiences in shaping their perceptions of expatriate leadership. The authors propose a new concept – expatriate leadership schema – which describes HCEs’ cognitive structures, developed during past experiences with successive expatriate leaders, which specify what HCEs believe expatriate leadership to look like and what they expect from it.

This study explores the role of expatriate satisfaction in organizational performance. It also posits that international transfer of knowledge and corporate learning are determinants in the overall satisfaction of expatriate managers. Moreover, as organizations gain international experience, their expatriate managers contribute to the global learning of the firm. This corporate learning provides the tools (e.g. foreign market experience and know‐how) for future expatriate managers and increases the likelihood of positive overseas experiences. Results from 132 expatriates of Fortune 500 firms indicate that satisfaction is significantly related to the performance of the organization as a whole and, further, that this relationship will vary depending on the international orientation of the organization.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the cross-cultural training (CCT) provided to European expatriate executives in New Zealand, and consequently add to the knowledge for human resource management in the Australasian region.

The present qualitative research study is based on open-ended and in-depth interviews with 30 European expatriate executives who had been residing in New Zealand for the past year or more.

The results indicate that at least some CCT was provided to all interviewees; however, the training content seemed to be strongly centered around professional work, with little focus on the culture of the host country. Moreover, there was no follow-up to the pre-departure CCT and very few expatriates in the sample received any training in New Zealand. Similarly, the family is considered a fundamental factor for the success of expatriates; however, in the sample, neither spouses nor children received any training before or after their arrival in New Zealand.

The research is limited by the sample small size. The study’s inconclusive highlights the need for further research to explore the influences of local residents, colleagues and neighbors on expatriates’ adjustment. Similarly, further studies are also required to ascertain the effectiveness of CCT in helping support expatriates’ performance and adjustment in New Zealand.

The present study suggests that opportunities do exist for multinational companies (MNCs) to better prepare their expatriates for assignments by integrating more effectively issues related to cultural awareness into their CCT. Specifically, experimental CCT methods that emphasize the host country’s culture are most valuable. The CCT technique should be tailored to the cultural distance between the host nation and expatriates’ country of origin and to the nature of their assignment.

Given the existence of many MNCs in New Zealand, it is surprising that the issue of CCT in this context has received little research attention. The current study endeavors to address this gap. This paper hopes that the findings may also be useful for consultants and human resource managers in MNCs who are involved in preparing expatriates for foreign assignments in Australasia, especially New Zealand.

This study is an empirical investigation of receptivity to expatriate assignment in culturally similar and dissimilar environments. The theoretical underpinnings of the study emerge from a model of the expatriate adjustment process which views the determinants as anticipatory adjustment variables antecedent to actual adjustment. Vertical individualism, career distance and corporate career policy along with role clarity and economic development as moderators were found to significantly explain willingness to relocate to culturally similar environments. Economic development, corporate family policy and career distance were significant predictors of mobility to culturally dissimilar environments. The proposed model for culturally similar environments substantially improves explanatory power over an existing model. Implications of the study in conjunction with predictors from the domestic mobility and international adjustment literature are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the behaviours described by expatriates (“what expatriates say they do”) when they are pressed for adjustment and, at the same time, they feel ethically challenged.

The authors interviewed 52 expatriates from the European Union working in Sub-Saharan Africa who were immersed in what was considered by them to be an ethically challenging context or situation while they were in the process of adjusting to their international assignment. The authors conducted a reflexive qualitative analysis between the data and existing literature.

The authors found that the feeling of moral discomfort that causes the perception of an ethical challenge is triggered by an event that contrasts with the expatriates’ notion of morals. After feeling ethically challenged, expatriates engage in a sensemaking process that is hinged in an “intended future identity”.

The authors contribute to the literature by stressing the ethical dimension of adjustment. The authors complement the normative approaches to ethical decision making in international contexts. The research identifies a set of events that are considered as ethical challenges by business expatriates.

The research opens the possibility to anticipate and manage potential conflicts, thus minimizing the probability of expatriation failure. Early knowledge about an expatriate's intended future identity can provide relevant information concerning the probable type of adjustment problems s/he will face.

The research combines two hitherto separate streams of literature – expatriate adjustment and ethical decision making in international contexts – to open the possibility of ethical adjustment. This is supported by a sensemaking process that is also grounded in future intentions, and not only in past experiences and present signals.

This study is based on the premise that, as organizations gain experience in the international marketplace, the determinants of job satisfaction for expatriate managers will vary. It is hypothesized that significant learning, manifested in firm international experience, will moderate the effects of work/life experience, mentorship, training and environmental benevolence. Findings partially support this theoretical argument and confirm the expectation that the impact of mentoring on satisfaction will lessen over the course of firm internationalization. Further, the impact of training on expatriate satisfaction was more pronounced for highly internationalized firms than for those with limited exposure abroad. Results of the empirical tests are provided, and their implications are discussed.

Most studies of expatriates have explored global careers as unfolding within assigned or self-initiated expatriation contexts in a predominantly linear fashion. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize that expatriates’ career progression is facilitated by frequent moves between domains, with an increasing overlap among assigned-expatriate (AE) and self-initiated expatriate (SIE) contexts.

Underpinned by findings from extant literature, the authors review and integrate studies of expatriation and careers to conceptualize an AE-SIE career continuum.

The authors debunk the idea that AEs and SIEs are a type of expatriate per se, but instead is indicative only of their career orientation in terms of where they choose to sit on the AE-SIE career continuum at any point in time. Specifically, individuals pursuing global careers in international labor markets include up to eight types of expatriate who retain varying degrees of AE vs SIE characteristics dependent on the point they choose along the continuum.

The tension that dynamic global careers cause for multinational enterprises (MNEs) is not necessarily “bad”, and that by accepting and accommodating changes in career orientation MNEs will be able to make clearer and more consistent global staffing decisions.

The authors provide a new, improved conceptualization of linear and non-linear global careers and of the challenges global career actors face throughout their career development both at home and abroad. They further show that while career orientation explains why expatriates engage in various types of international work experiences, their typology adds explication of the various types of expatriate who pursue global careers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new information about overseas volunteer development workers undertaking projects in underdeveloped countries, specifically, their backgrounds, personalities, values and previous experience, motivations, experiences, learning and “transformation” gained, and possible impact on further career; the degree of fit of experiences to the archetypal “hero's adventure”.

The paper presents a longitudinal study of a cohort of 48 New Zealand volunteers starting work on NZ aid organisation Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA) assignments in 2001. This included structured interviews and administration of the NEO‐ PR personality inventory and the Schein Career orientation Inventory pre‐departure and on return and an e‐mail survey halfway through the assignment. Data analysis was largely qualitative using NVivo software.

Volunteers had high levels of openness and agreeableness, and career anchors of dedication to a cause and pure challenge. The majority of volunteers fitted the main characteristics of the “hero's adventure” model, duplicating results for business expatriates by Osland and academic expatriates by Richardson. Key features were motivations of adventure and altruism, descriptions of trials and tribulations during the project, feelings of success, new skill and personal transformations in identity and values.

This is a mainly qualitative study of small sample from specific national location. Longer‐term follow‐up needed.

The paper provides valuable information for potential volunteers, for aid organisations selecting and supporting them and potential employers of volunteers.

Volunteer development work is increasingly common, is undertaken by thousands in third‐world countries, and is a potentially life‐changing experience, but research on it is very limited. This is the first in‐depth study, where findings paint a vivid picture of its nature and effects on the individual.

Purpose –– This chapter shows the connection between the reality of intercultural communication training and its importance to the development of intercultural communication competence, symbolised by the Rainbow Model of Intercultural Communication Competence.

Methodology/approach –– 405 useable questionnaires (response rate=19.4%) were used from 56 German MNEs in a convenience sample of companies in the high-tech industry that are suppliers for the automotive, aviation, optical and chemical industry.

Findings –– German MNCs provide traditional intercultural communication training sparingly to expatriates, but with adjustments depending on the target country. Only 41% of training recipients deemed the training helpful for their mission. Non-traditional training methods are administered more consistently.

Practical implications –– The Rainbow Model of Intercultural Communication Competence should guide the implementation of customised intercultural communication training efforts.

Social implications –– Assisting expatriates in their development of intercultural communication competence via intercultural communication training fulfils the social responsibility of multinational enterprises.

Originality/value of chapter –– This chapter provides guidance to human resource specialists in the international arena to design and implement customisable intercultural communication training programmes for expatriates.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Global Talent Management (GTM) approaches and praxis with a specific focus on global deployment goal congruence and alignment between expatriates and the organization, talent recognition, valuation and utilization of repatriates.

Qualitative research in this paper entails interviews with 78 expatriates and repatriates across the globe, investigating their experiences with, perspectives on and perceptions of GTM praxis and approaches.

Findings of this study revealed firstly, that there is incongruence and misalignment of goals in global deployment where organizational, financial goals prevailed over social and human-oriented goals. Secondly, a lack of global talent pools and pipelines where interviewees indicated that expatriate assignments (EAs) were typically reactionary without strategic forward thinking on talent management (TM), observable through organizations' focus on short-term return on investment (ROI) on EAs instead of long-term talent investments. Thirdly, there was little recognition and non-utilization of cross-cultural human capital and talents upon repatriation.

This study relied on self-reports of expatriates' and repatriates' perceptions of and experiences with GTM approaches. Future research should gather multi-actor, multiple-source data from expatriates and repatriates, senior leaders, line managers, GTM strategic business partners to gain more insight into GTM approaches and praxis.

Organizations are recommended to conduct “Global Talent Management Open Strategy Formation” as the foundation of an evidence-based, integrative GTM architecture and praxis to ensure GTM effectiveness.

This paper contributes to the literature by advocating for sustainable, people-centric GTM to safeguard the longevity and sustainability of all members of the talent ecosystem.