Abstract
Abstract This study aims to understand the tactics that expatriates use to manage the interface between work and home. This qualitative study was performed using in-depth interviews later submitted to content analysis, with 64 male Brazilian expatriates. The results showed that expatriates manage the conflicts that may appear in relationships with social actors from the organizational (e.g., employers, customers, and suppliers) and home (spouse, children, and parents) domains by using boundary work tactics. The analysis revealed a list of tactics that allow the expatriates to integrate or segment the work and home domains. This study suggests how expatriates can actively interact with people from work and home domains in such a way that they can build and maintain better work and home relationships during the period they are living in other country. Additionally, companies should develop work-home policies that consider the preferences that an expatriate and his family have for integrating or segmenting work and home domains.
Highlights
Working within international markets requires that organizations manage a global labor force
Our analysis of the data revealed 10 tactics used by expatriates to manage the interface between work and home during their overseas assignments
After the name of each tactic, we reported the percentage of participants who offered at least one piece of empirical evidence that referred to the theme
Summary
Working within international markets requires that organizations manage a global labor force. Increased stress is experienced in the home environment during this period, given the emotional vulnerability and the cultural conflicts to which the family is subjected in the host environment (Lazarova, Westman & Shaffer, 2010). Taken together, these factors make the work-home conflict a theme of growing importance for the international management of human resources. These factors make the work-home conflict a theme of growing importance for the international management of human resources Given this context, several researchers have dedicated themselves to study, under different approaches, the conflict/balance between work and home experienced by executives in overseas assignments. Some studies have been performed at the individual level of analysis with qualitative approaches to understand expatriates’ perceptions of work conflicts and what organizations can do to alleviate this problem (Fischlmayr & Kollinger, 2010; Rosenbusch, Cerny II & Earnest, 2015)
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