Self-Initiated Expatriate Academics: Personal Characteristics and Work Outcomes

Abstract

Increasing globalization of the business world has led to a marked scholarly interest in cross-national personnel transfer in the form of expatriation (cf. Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005; Hechanova, Beehr and Christiansen, 2003). Despite little attempt to make any distinction between different types of expatriates, the overwhelming majority of such studies have focused on what has been assumed to be assigned expatriates (AEs). These individuals are so labelled because they have been assigned by their parent companies to the foreign location. However, the nature and purpose of international assignments is becoming increasingly complex (Mayerhofer et al., 2004). This has led to a range of new roles and career paths for expatriates (Collings, Scullion and Morley, 2007). Some of these emerging populations of relocated staff have been termed as ‘international itinerants’ (Banai and Harry, 2004) or ‘independent internationally mobile professionals’ (McKenna and Richardson, 2007). What characterizes these recent trends in international assignments is that individuals personally take charge of their career trajectories without the direct support of an organization (Carr, Kerr and Thorn, 2005). In general terms, they can be labelled ‘self-initiated expatriates’ (SIEs) (Lee, 2005).