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Purpose –– This chapter examines theories and models that could be used to explain female expatriate participation with a view to identifying the most promising theoretical lenses for future research. It takes as its basis, issues, evidence and explanations from both ‘women in management’ and ‘women expatriates’ literature to identify four main theoretical domains: family issues, assignee characteristics, host and home country norms, and institutional factors. Key theories and models within each of these four domains are highlighted and discussed and their potential contribution to understanding and explaining female expatriation evaluated.

Methodology/approach –– A Delphi study and advanced library database search were used to generate data for conceptual analysis.

Findings –– The most promising explanations of women's low expatriate participation are identified as being linked to occupational gender stereotyping and sex roles in employment, women's reduced social capital and patriarchal attitudes towards their identity and homemaker roles. These are reinforced by institutional isomorphic behaviour through which organisations mimic each other's human resource practices.

Research limitations/implications –– The research drew upon English language sources only in data collection and analysis.

Practical implications –– Scrutiny of organisational policies and practices applied to expatriate assignments is required to increase gender diversity in expatriation.

Social implications –– Further research using theoretical underpinning is required both to understand gender diversity within corporate international mobility and to prevent women's current low representation from continuing in future.

Originality/value of chapter –– There is little evidence to date of an accepted theoretical framework to test hypotheses relating to women's low expatriate participation. This chapter addresses this gap, identifying potentially helpful theoretical lenses for future female expatriate research.

The article builds upon recent developments in feminist theories as they were adopted in organization studies to review the state of research into women in MNCs and to offer new directions for the study of MNCs as “gendering organizations,” both as they are shaped by gender relations and are active agents in constructing gender categories, division of labor, images, and inequalities. Juxtaposing insights from gender studies and International Business and Management, the article offers a new agenda for the studies of corporate internationalization and its social consequences.

This article examinees how vulnerability operates within the intimate economy in Hong Kong’s prominent entertainment district of Wanchai. Best known in its portrayal of The World of Suzie Wong, Wanchai’s historicity is anchored in a legacy of colonialism, orientalist imagination, and Western militarization. Presently, the area continues to cater to Western expatriate men, foreign travellers and the US Navy. An influx of Southeast Asian migrant domestic workers to Hong Kong in recent decades has led to the rise of new intimate relationships fostered in the bar district. While Wanchai is renowned as a red-light district celebrating white Western masculinity, a complex portrait emerged after a year of ethnographic fieldwork observing the intimate exchanges between Western expatriate men and Southeast Asian migrant domestic workers, as two groups who are positioned on opposite ends of the city’s socioeconomic spectrum. Contrary to recurrent portrayals of female victimhood in commercialized sex industries, this article illustrates how other experiences of vulnerability, particularly those of the Western male expatriate partner, also deserve critical attention. By exploring the decommercialized transactions within Wanchai’s intimate economy, this piece demonstrates how the intimate relations forged between Western expatriates and Southeast Asian migrants can help negotiate longstanding gendered relations of power and shared senses of structural precarity.

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.

In Chapter 1, Susan Shortland (2011) examined theories and models that could be used to explain female expatriate participation with a view to identifying the most promising theoretical lenses for future research. Her study took as its basis, issues, evidence and explanations from both the ‘women in management’ and ‘women expatriates’ literature to identify four main theoretical domains: family issues, assignee characteristics, host and home country norms, and institutional factors. Findings revealed that the most promising explanations of women's low expatriate participation were identified as being linked to occupational gender stereotyping and sex roles in employment, women's reduced social capital and patriarchal attitudes towards their identity and homemaker roles. These were reinforced by institutional isomorphic behaviour through which organisations mimic each other's human resource practices.

In this interview, Dr. Nancy J. Adler describes her career trajectory, motivation, and the passion that have guided her interests and choices. Asking big questions that matter in her own research and encouraging others in the field of international management to do the same is one of her guiding principles. Dr. Adler details the startling career impact that resulted from her pioneering research on women who are global leaders in the 1990s. Given her groundbreaking research, her attempts to influence what scholars study and how they are evaluated, and her calls to action as a global consultant, speaker, and thought leader, she is one of academe's most well-known and respected global leaders.

Dr. Adler is the S. Bronfman Professor Emerita in Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), having received her BA in Economics, MBA, and PhD in Management. As one of the most widely cited international management scholars, she has authored more than 175 publications and received numerous teaching and research awards, including the Academy of Management's (AMLE) Outstanding Article Award and Decade Award and the Sage Award for Scholarly Contributions in Management. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, the Academy of Management, and the International Academy of Management. In addition, she was honored as one of Canada's top university professors and inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.

Her work has also been widely recognized beyond academia. She received the Prix du Quebec, Doctor Honoris Causa from Slovenia's IEDC Bled, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Center for Creative Leadership's Applied Research Award, the World Federation of People Management Associations' Georges Petitpas Award, ASTD's International Leadership Award, SIETAR's Outstanding Senior Interculturalist Award, the International Leadership Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the YWCA's Femme de Mérite Award.

Although retired from the university setting after 40 years at McGill, Dr. Adler continues to consult and speak around the world. However, she now devotes more time to her art. She is a visual artist known for her paintings, monotype prints, and ceramic artworks. Her “Serendipity Suite” and “Reality in Translation: Art Transforming Apathy into Action” exhibitions were held at the Banff Centre, and her “Going Beyond the Dehydrated Language of Management” exhibition opened in Montreal in conjunction with the Academy of Management Meeting. Dr. Adler's artwork is held in private collections worldwide.

We review 25 years of research on expatriate experiences concentrating on expatriate adjustment as a central construct, and relying on a general stressor-stress-strain framework. First, we consider who expatriates are, why their experiences differ from domestic employees, and what adjustment is. Conceptualizing (mal)adjustment in terms of stress, we next review the stressors and strains associated with it. Consolidating the wide range of antecedents (anticipatory and in-country) that have been studied to date, we note major patterns of effects and their implications for how HR managers can facilitate adjustment. Although relatively less research has focused on the consequences of adjustment, enough evidence exists to establish a bottom-line impact of poor adjustment on performance. To stimulate future efforts to understand the experiences of expatriates, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of continuing down this road of research.

This chapter examines the contemporary migration of Italian families to Morocco. Situating Italian emigration studies in context, it describes how this ‘new migration’ is a result of both historical and economic factors. Beginning with how ‘being in motion’ shapes the everyday lives of Italian women and families, it points out that migration is a way to apply agency. Being on the move through migration is presented not only as a process that (re)shapes the family, but also as a means of attaining an imagined model of family, one based on cultural aspirations of a good life for one’s self and one’s children.