Recognizing the important role of self-initiated expatriates in effective global talent management

Abstract

The effective management of talent on a global scale represents a critical challenge for today's organizations. Beyond considerations about traditional company-assigned expatriates, this paper provides a valuable examination of global talent management issues involving self-initiated expatriates, an important source of global talent increasingly available in host country labor markets that has only relatively recently come to the attention of researchers. The paper discusses how central elements of talent management (i.e., identifying, recruiting, and selecting talent from the external labor market; developing employees; managing talent flows; ensuring retention of talented employees) can apply to the effective utilization of self-initiated expatriates, with direct implications for guiding the future work of practitioners and researchers alike.