Expatriates' Work–Nonwork Interface – What Do We Know About It and What Should We Learn?

Abstract

This chapter reviews current literature focusing on the empirical knowledge about positive and negative spillover between expatriates’ different life spheres and their work and nonwork balance. The authors explore the body of literature and start by bringing together ideas about expatriates’ work–nonwork conflict (work-to-nonwork conflict: WLC; nonwork-to-work conflict: LWC) and enrichment (work-to-nonwork enrichment or WLE; nonwork-to-work enrichment or LWE) and work–nonwork balance (WLB) and what there is to know about their occurrence, antecedents, and outcomes. The knowledge provided by this review highlights areas of the work–nonwork literature on expatriates that remain empirically underexplored and suggests some avenues that future studies could focus on. Therefore, this chapter also aims to provide insights on how the international context should be acknowledged in future research on expatriate work–nonwork balance and, more generally, how work–nonwork research should pay more attention to the different contexts in which balancing different life spheres occurs.