Evolving research on expatriates: what is `known

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Evolving research on expatriates: what is ‘known’ after four decades (1970–2012) ab

c

Marina Dabic , Miguel González-Loureiro & Michael Harvey

de

a

Department of International Economics, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia b

Department of Management, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK c

Department of Business Organisation and Marketing, University of Vigo, Pontevedra, Spain d

Department of Management, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA e

Department of Strategy, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia Published online: 18 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Marina Dabic, Miguel González-Loureiro & Michael Harvey , The International Journal of Human Resource Management (2013): Evolving research on expatriates: what is ‘known’ after four decades (1970–2012), The International Journal of Human Resource Management, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2013.845238 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.845238

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The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.845238

Evolving research on expatriates: what is ‘known’ after four decades (1970– 2012) Marina Dabica,b, Miguel Gonza´lez-Loureiroc and Michael Harveyd,e,* Department of International Economics, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia; bDepartment of Management, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK; c Department of Business Organisation and Marketing, University of Vigo, Pontevedra, Spain; d Department of Management, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA; eDepartment of Strategy, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia


a

The purpose of this paper was to provide a comprehensive review of the evolving research on a still key challenge for human resource management (HRM) in the globalized business of today: the expatriates and their impact on business performance. Research of four decades was reviewed to show what was known and what was not yet known. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to build a conceptual map of the evolving research. Up to 438 papers published in 104 different journals by 233 authors were analyzed. Most of the literature studies and research does not show a systematic approach, so this review may be useful for scholars and practitioners in the field of HRM and International Business Management in order to advance into the next stage of development on how to deal with and take advantage of hiring expatriates. Even after more than four decades of intensive research, the literature on expatriation is still nascent and requires higher order content. New contexts and organizations should be included in the research agenda, while an effort must be made in systematic approaches and in building higher order content in the international HRM field. Keywords: content analysis; expatriates; human resource development; human resource management; international business management; literature review

Introduction and foundations of expatriate research Research on expatriates may be framed into two different but complementary research topics: human resource management (HRM) and practices, and international business management (IBM). After four decades of empirical research, a review seems to be required to provide a foundation for building a theory of expatriate management. This is the main goal of this paper: to provide an in-depth review of research on expatriate managers that will hopefully enable scholars to conduct empirical research while attempting to build a universal theory of expatriation. This theory may help avoid ineffective management practices such as the situations reported by Anderson (2005), where expatriate selection seems to be sometimes more a matter of good luck instead of a conscious management practice. A great deal of past research on expatriation has been published in journals whose scope is related to HRM topics (Harvey and Moeller 2009). While expatriates have been defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary since 1812, the key research efforts/articles started to appear in the academic literature in the 1960– 1970s. Gonza´lez (1967) is one of the first references in the management discipline, which seemed to open a new research avenue for research followers. No sooner had it been published when new issues emerged, most of them related to HRM and practices; for instance, the compensation of international

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] q 2013 Taylor & Francis


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executives (Schollhammer 1969), multinational management staffing (Baker and Ivancevich 1970) or local subsidiary managers (Daniels 1973). The principal trends in investigating the role of expatriates include sociological and psychological arenas, as researchers started to apply the expatriation concept in a variety of ways, such as expatriate communities (Cohen 1977), the personnel psychology in overseas executives (Jerdee 1968; Miller and Cheng 1978), and international careers of MBA students (Adler 1986). Despite its relevance for HRM and international business fields, this topic is the result of intertwined facets beyond the realm of merely business management. Green (2009) and Bickers (2010) documented the historical perspective of the term ‘expatriate’ with largely ignored issues such as citizenship, dual-career development or even settlement of expatriates’ societies. According to Green (2009), the first documented reference to the word ‘expatriate’ can be found in the Expatriation Act in the USA in 1812, referred to as a ‘suspicious citizen’, in contrast to the modern status of the somehow ‘privileged’ workers overseas.1 Perhaps as a response to the initial challenges, research focused the attention on cultural differences between country of origin and that of destiny (Oberg 1960), and then evolved along with current challenges that multinationals face. It can be argued that expatriation research belongs to the general field of HRM, while there are other topics that may also be suitable to extend the findings and research in this field. One of the clearest applications of expatriate research belongs to the field of IBM research. While its relationship with HRM is evident, it is not necessarily so in the case of IBM. However, the research conducted in the last four decades points out the need to extend this research beyond the HRM practices. The rationale for the relationship between IBM and hiring expatriates is implied in a great deal in investigations on internationalization and the resulting expatriation of managers. The classical theory of internationalization assumes that the process of internationalization is a gradual process of resource commitment because of the knowledge dependency: firms achieve further knowledge of external markets through non-traditional industries and e-businesses across the regions which could be extremely helpful in assessing which types of multinational corporation strategies are most beneficial to expatriates. Therefore, hiring expatriates may facilitate an increase in the speed of internationalization owing to the knowledge they possess. This stream of IBM generally includes the managerial issues in multinational firms through a combination of the agency theory and the expectancy theory to provide a framework explaining how to manage international human resources. Therefore, one can assume that foundations of the research on expatriates belong to both HRM and/or international business in general. After four decades of research in the field of expatriation, it could be argued that it is time to assess what we have learned to this point as well what still remains unsolved relative to expatriation (Avril and Magnini 2007; Harvey and Moeller 2009). The results of a literature review are of interest for several reasons. First, scholars will benefit from examining the patterns of expatriate research patterns and suggestions for new research avenues. Second, methods such as meta-analysis are suggested to help build a general theory on managing expatriates, bearing in mind the need for a balance between a global system and adaptations to particularities. Third, practitioners could gain additional insight into issues relative to managing expatriates, so they will be aware of the known facts and controversial issues, which may need attention when deploying an international HRM (IHRM) process. Fourth, gaps in the research pattern(s) over the last 40 years will be uncovered illustrating issues that need to have additional research conducted on them. And, fifth, topics with relative importance to the practitioners will be highlighted and will provide some of the tools/knowledge necessary to address managing expatriates during the expatriation process.

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

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The next sections of the paper present the review of the literature review conducted by major journals that have dealt with the expatriation process. The main themes identified are analyzed by a content analysis. Subsequently, a conceptual map has been built by using the Wordstat software (v. 6.1). The titles and keywords from abstracts of 438 papers published in journals or indexed in the ISI-Web of Science database (ISI-WoS) have been analyzed. After the conceptual map has been created, conclusions are introduced and suggestions for future research are included.


Data collection and method for classifying the literature Data were gathered by a search undertaken using the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database of the ISI-Web of Knowledge, provided by Thomson-Reuters. Initially, the lexeme ‘expatriat*’ in either title or topic was searched. The wildcard ‘*’ was used to assure that all the possible combinations of the lexeme ‘expatriate’ (e.g. ‘expatriate’, ‘expatriates’ or ‘expatriation’) were obtained. Once extracted to form the initial list, the results were screened to select only those related with ‘business’, ‘management’ or ‘economics’ topic, including sociology and psychology as well. This is to avoid the noise produced by other social topics included in the SSCI; for instance, demography, geography, anthropology, law and the like. The document type selected was ‘article’. This filtration process reduced the initial outcome of 1259 results to 593. From these, the time span selected was the period 1970– 2012. As a limitation during the consultation (early April 2012), it should be noted that the last year included only the journals published in the first quarter. The final list offers a total of 438 papers that deal with the term ‘expatriate’ in the title or the keywords during the period 1970 –2012. A subsequent content analysis was conducted according to the objectives of this research. Both manual and computer-aided content analysis methods were used in order to assure the reliability of the procedure. Extracting most frequently used words from the title and the keywords provided by authors was the first goal of the content analysis. The software used was Wordstat (v. 6.1). This software has already been used in more than 300 research papers in diverse academic fields. To be more specific, in the case of business and management research this software has been used by several authors. Levy (2005) used it to analyze the influence of top management team’s intended patterns on firms’ global strategic posture. Gray, Roos and Rastas (2004) developed a content analysis of the annual reports of UK and Finnish enterprises concerning how they inform about their intangible resources. Morris (1994) developed a relevant work on analyzing the validity of computerized content analysis applied in management research, which validates the use of this method in our case. Pollach (2011) provided a critical review of this software’s suitability for quantitative analysis of textual data. While the research methodology has been applied in a number of different areas, it has not been utilized in an international management context. Therefore, one of the contributions of the paper is the use of the classification process/method. It is also important to note that the refinement of the process allows the screening of articles down to a specific term – expatriate. This makes the methodology unique for studying expatriate managers. The software analyzes the key grammatical components mainly in nouns, verbs and adjectives. A conceptual map is one of the main outcomes. The algorithm takes into consideration the frequency of the words and the proximity among them to provide the conceptual map, where the globe dimension is proportional to the frequency of occurrence, and the proximity among words is a proportion weighted by that frequency

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and the proximity in the sentence (i.e. co-occurrence by means of a Jaccard distance). The software can also automatically count the number of papers that an individual has either authored or co-authored. Hence, it provides an exhaustive descriptive statistical outcome, as well as a conceptual outcome, derived from the examination of a large amount of data. Evolving expatriate research patterns after four decades Figure 1 shows the dynamics followed by the number of papers per year related to the expatriation topic from 1993 to date. The profound global crisis that occurred in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, initiated with a stock collapse on the Black Monday of October 1987, with the tensions in the price of petrol due to the Gulf War and with the final negative impact of inflation worldwide, seemed to foster the first wave of articles in the 1990s. A second wave of expatriate research took place between 2000 and 2007, when the number of papers increased up to an average of 19 –20 per year. When the current global crisis had only just begun in 2008, the number of papers increased up to an average of 44 –45 papers each year. The number of citations per year seems to follow a similar trajectory during that period. As shown, this topic appears to follow a parallel path to business cycles in the past decades. These finding suggests the relevance of the topic in addressing the internationalization process, particularly when the business cycle shows stagnant signs in domestic markets. The approach to the internationalization process usually follows a classical theory based on the foundations of the firm’s organizational behavior (Cyert and March 1963) and the theory of the firm’s growth (Penrose 1959). It is stated that the firm’s internationalization, as an organizational behavior that seeks growth, can only imply a gradual growth process: firms can only reply to the pressure of the international markets by a marginal increase in the commitment of scarce resources (Johanson and Vahlne 1977, 1990). On the other hand, new challenges have arisen from recent approaches to internationalization of organizations that do not necessarily follow a gradual process. This is the case of the ‘born global’ phenomenon; those international new ventures that become international not much longer after their establishment (Knight and Kavusgil 1996;

Published papers per year 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15

900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

10 5 0

Number of citations per year 1000

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012


Results of literature review

Figure 1. Evolution of the scientific literature on expatriates. Source: ISI-Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).



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Moen 2002). The latter pattern frequently implies either knowledge- or technology-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which also includes a rapid process of international commitment in several countries in a very short time (Kuivalainen, Saarenketo and Puumalainen 2012). International new ventures with a rapid internationalization process have been identified to have a different pattern, namely born-again global (Bell, McNaughton and Young 2001; Kuivalainen et al. 2012). All these international trajectories call for further research in the application of expatriate research to other phenomena different to the overestimated case of multinationals, and it is an opportunity to enlarge the empirical findings so that a general theory on managing expatriates can be outlined. In the case of expatriates, it seems that hiring them as managers may increase the speed and performance of the internationalization process, especially when there is greater pressure on the management to obtain a quick return, and in particular during stagnant and recession cycles. The breakdown by first author’s country is depicted in Table 1. As shown, a relevant percentage (more than 62%) is provided by English-speaking countries, such as USA, Table 1. Breakdown of papers by first author’s country (top 25). Countries USA England People’s Republic of China Australia Canada Taiwan Denmark France Germany Japan Finland New Zealand Spain South Korea Austria Hong Kong The Netherlands Scotland Singapore Belgium Ireland Israel Poland Switzerland Turkey

Record count

Percentage of 438

Trade openness Indexa

174 61 44 37 31 23 18 18 18 14 12 12 11 10 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 3 3 3

39.726 13.927 10.046 8.447 7.078 5.251 4.110 4.110 4.110 3.196 2.740 2.740 2.511 2.283 1.370 1.370 1.370 1.370 1.370 1.142 1.142 0.913 0.685 0.685 0.685

1.7 2.3 2.7 2.4 2.4 2.8 3.7 2.5 3.0 2.0 3.0 2.4 2.3 2.7 3.6 4.9 4.2 2.3 4.9 4.5 4.0 2.3 2.7 3.7 2.0

Source: ISI-Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012). a Data of trade openness obtained from the International Chamber of Commerce (2012).

Bar chart of total papers


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England and Australia. The emerging Asian economies are also top providers of papers in this field, for instance the People’s Republic of China or Taiwan. Therefore, the breakdown by countries seems to point out the possible existence of a relationship between what can be called the openness of an economy and the scientific production in the field of research on expatriates. The research has been mainly governed by US perspectives. This fact was also highlighted and criticized by Delbridge, Hauptmeier and Sengupta (2011) in the general stream of research on IHRM. The expatriate topic is no different. Therefore, a more broader geographical perspective seems to be required in empirical research in order to test the arguable universal validity of theories on IHRM, or to find whether the contextual dependency of managing human resources calls for a necessary level of adaptation. This controversial issue received much of the scholars’ attention over the last decades (De Cieri, Cox and Fenwick 2007), with different names for the same debate: up to what point IHRM practices may or should be adapted (or diverged) or conversely, whether there is a chance for a global system (convergence). Some authors claimed that a system for IHRM balanced between global practices and their adaptation to a certain level of contextual particularities should be developed (Branine and Dvorˇa´kova´ 2000; De Cieri et al. 2007). In the case of expatriates, literature offers plenty of references pointing out the need for adjustment based on cultural differences (e.g. Thomas and Toyne 1995; Yamazaki and Kayes 2007). However, the cut-off point for the geographical scope optimal for adapting HRM practices or not still remains elusive from the expatriates’ viewpoint. From a general perspective, Paik, Chow and Vance (2011) suggest crossvergence as the solution for this old debate: developing global practices while considering contextual particularities. Other authors have explored different geographical areas, such as the region of Latin America, instead of referring to national particularities (Bonache-Pe´rez and Pla-Barber 2005). Concerning the main journals publishing academic articles related to the field of expatriates (see Table 2), we can observe that three journals account for 48% of the total number of papers published in the period analyzed. According to the Herfindahl and Hirschman concentration index (H)2, we can say that the field is being dealt with by a moderate concentrated number of journals (H ¼ 1673), because the index is bounded between 10,000 (the case in which only one journal would cover the field) and zero in its limit towards infinite. Although this index is usually used to evaluate the degree of concentration in a market, especially what concerns the anti-trust authorities in the USA, it has been used extensively in bibliometric analysis, for instance the analysis of the decreasing rate of citations from 1900 to 2007 developed by Larivie`re, Gingras and Archambault (2009) or the bibliometric analysis of health economics articles in the economics literature from 1991 to 2000 developed by Rubin and Chang (2003). In turn, Fidessa Fragmentation Index (FFI), the lesser known index in literature calculated as the inverse of the H-index, may provide information on how fragmented the theme is among journals in our case. This index is usually calculated in finance to provide a simple, unbiased measure of how different stocks are fragmented across primary markets and alternative venues, for instance as shown by Pierron (2010) and Axioglou and Skouras (2011). As the inverse of the H-index, it may range from 1 up to the number of journals that have tackled the field of expatriates (104 journals in our case). According to the latter authors, it provides the number of journals that mainly concentrate on the theme. In our case FFI ¼ 5.98,3 which means that the majority of papers is concentrated on six journals. As shown in Table 2, they account for 54.3% of all papers if we count the top-five journals or 56.4% if the sixth is included. Additionally, the first one among them (the International Journal of Human Resource Management) represents more than one-third of the papers.


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Table 2. Top-25 journals publishing articles related to expatriates.


Journal title 1. International Journal of Human Resource Management 2. Journal of World Business 3. Journal of International Business Studies 4. International Journal of Manpower 5. Academy of Management Journal 6. African Journal of Business Management 7. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 8. Human Relations 9. Management International Review 10. European Journal of International Management 11. Human Resource Management Review 12. Academy of Management Executive 13. Journal of Business Research 14. Harvard Business Review 15. International Business Review 16. Journal of International Management 17. Journal of Management Studies 18. Management Decision 19. Asia Pacific Business Review 20. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 21. Asia Pacific Journal of Management 22. British Journal of Management 23. Columbia Journal of World Business 24. Compensation Review 25. Journal of Organizational Change Management

Record count

Percentage share of 438

138

31.507

44 30

10.046 6.849

16 10 9

3.653 2.283 2.055

9

2.055

9 9 7

2.055 2.055 1.598

7 6 6 5 4 4 4 4 3 3

1.598 1.370 1.370 1.142 0.913 0.913 0.913 0.913 0.685 0.685

3

0.685

3 3

0.685 0.685

3 3

0.685 0.685

Bar chart

Source: ISI-Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).

Therefore, it can be said that the field is still being covered by a low number of different journals, mainly from the arena of HRM and IBM, as expected. The top-15 most cited authors draw together up to 100 different papers, which represents up to 22.8% of the total number of papers analyzed (438; see Table 3). They represent as many as 3663 citations, over 66.8% of the total number of citations (5481) collected by the papers analyzed for the period 1970 –2012. These figures may have a different level of recognition depending on which relative indicator is used. If we consider the frequency of authors’ citations (column ‘a’ in the table), the top-three authors are Black (796 citations, 14.5% of total citations), Gregersen4 (490 citations and 8.9% of total citations) and Feldman (331 citations and 6.0% of total citations). However, the classification is different when we consider the most productive authors (i.e. the number of

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Table 3. Top-15 most cited authors.


Author Black Gregersen Feldman Tung Rosenzweig Nohria Wang Caligiuri Turnley Selmer Harvey Harrison Suutari Shaffer Brewster

(a) Frequency of author citationsa

(b) Percentage of author citations (n ¼ 5481)

(c) Average citations per paper (a/b)

(d) Number of author’s papers

(e) Percentage of author’s papers (n ¼ 438)

796 490 331 236 193 193 186 181 171 170 155 153 142 134 132

14.52 8.94 6.04 4.31 3.52 3.52 3.39 3.30 3.12 3.10 2.83 2.79 2.59 2.44 2.41

66 61 110 59 193 193 21 23 171 8 10 51 20 67 26

12 8 3 4 1 1 9 8 1 21 15 3 7 2 5

3.45 2.30 0.86 1.15 0.29 0.29 2.59 2.30 0.29 6.03 4.31 0.86 2.01 0.57 1.44

Source: ISI-Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012). a Reflects the total number of citations for all the papers the author has in the ISI-Web of Science database.

papers published, column ‘d’), with the top-three authors being Selmer (21 papers), Harvey (15) and Black (12). Furthermore, if we correct the number of citations according to the number of papers, top-three authors are Rosenzweig and Nohria5 (193 average citations, 1 paper), Turnley (171 average citations, 1 paper) and Feldman (110 average citations, 3 papers). Therefore, it can be said that up to eight authors bring together what can be called the essential foundations of the research in this field because of their, somehow, high number of citations during a period of 41 years. Table 4 shows the top-10 most cited articles during the period analyzed. It is only introduced during the period 2008– 2012 in the number of citations per each year in the table, bearing in mind that 2012 is not a complete year since only the first quarter has been included. Nevertheless, the information concerning the total number of citations is referred to the full period 2007– 2012. As shown, the average number of citations per year is approximately 137 and an average of 5– 6% of them are referred to in one of the top-10 most cited papers. Virtually all of these articles deal with HRM practices concerning the ways of managing properly the expatriates’ cases in multinational corporations – most of them relating to the career development field. Anecdotally, only one article approaches the topic from the psychological perspective. As shown, the top cited papers primarily deal with HRM and career development issues. However, this analysis would be incomplete if it only considered the content of the top cited papers. Thus, in the next subsection, we introduce the main results derived from the content analysis of the 438 papers conducted by keywords and titles. Results of the content analysis The software analyzes key content of articles by assessing nouns, verbs and adjectives. This analysis was split into two steps: keywords and titles. The latter contains the essence of the paper provided by the authors. The former is also provided by the authors and,


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Table 4. Top-10 most cited articles in the period 1970– 2012.

S. No.

1.


2. 3 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Authors Total number of papers ¼ 438 Rosenzweig and Nohria (1994) Black (1988) Turnley and Feldman (1999) Black and Gregersen (1991a) Shaffer, Harrison and Gilley (1999) Tung (1998) Feldman and Thomas (1992) Stahl, Miller and Tung (2002) Bjorkman, Barner-Rasmussen and Li (2004) Black and Gregersen (1991b)

Average Total citations citations 1970– 2012 per year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 5481

137.02

640

920

781 1008

95

193

10.16

23

20

19

24

4

183 171 123 115

7.32 12.21 5.59 8.21

19 24 11 16

16 20 12 16

15 21 10 13

14 17 8 17

1 6 2 2

108 97 80 78

7.20 4.62 7.27 8.67

10 8 9 7

22 14 24 16

13 9 10 14

14 7 16 23

1 2 2 2

74

3.36

9

3

4

4

1

Source: ISI-Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).

additionally, the ISI-WoS provides the ‘keywords plus’ for each paper. This consists of some words extracted from the title automatically by the system. The system searches the best words that fit in the main theme the paper deals with. Hence, keywords provided by authors were merged with the other keywords. The main results are presented in Table 5. Up to 105 different keywords have been used in the 438 papers analyzed. Because of the length of the original table, the cut-off criterion was defined as words which in cumulative terms explained more than 60% of the frequency and the number of the papers. This criterion offered a reasonable number of 26 words (i.e. the most frequently used words in this field in terms of descriptors). As expected, ‘expatriate/s’ is the predominant keyword, appearing in more than 53% of the analyzed papers. Around one-third of the papers used the following keywords: assignment/s, adjustment, management and international. If we read between the lines, we can see how academics are interested in researching the essential question: how expatriates may help improve a company’s performance. Boosting this linkage requires some managerial practices mainly from the HRM point of view in search of either satisfaction or performance. Several other issues may be considered: culture and strategy are usually preferred to take advantage of when hiring expatriates in order to increase the performance in international companies (Harzing 2001). Additionally, it must be highlighted that the topic is being researched mainly in multinational corporations and in subsidiaries (see Table 5). Therefore, there is room for more empirical and theoretical research applied to other phenomena, for example international new ventures, born global and international SMEs or international not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the increasing phenomena of SMEs going international, which quite often find several problems in their performance within overseas markets, offer relevant opportunities to enlarge the research on expatriates. Some other relevant basic factors for competing today might be missing, for instance the relationship between creativity/ innovation and hiring expatriates. It is expected that expatriates are open-minded individuals because of their international experience. On the other hand, researchers’ interests have been detected in investigating models in an attempt to build a general theory

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Table 5. Main words used as keywords (explaining 60% of cases).


Keywords Expatriate/s Assignment/s Adjustment Management International Performance Cultural/culture MNCs/multinationals/ corporations Model Managers Resource Human China/Chinese Strategy/strategies/strategic Corporate Cross Organizational Job Satisfaction Subsidiary/subsidiaries Firm/s United Career/s Antecedents Selection Japan/Japanese

Number of papers

Percentage share of papers (n ¼ 438) (%)

Share of frequency Sfreq ¼ 3675 (%)

Cumulative share of frequency (%)

232 162 148 143 143 116 104 100

53.0 37.0 33.8 32.6 32.6 26.5 23.7 22.8

6.3 4.4 4.0 3.9 3.9 3.2 2.8 2.7

6.3 10.7 14.7 18.6 22.5 25.7 28.5 31.2

96 85 73 73 73 65 62 59 58 57 53 50 50 47 46 45 44 43

21.9 19.4 16.7 16.7 16.7 14.8 14.2 13.5 13.2 13.0 12.1 11.4 11.4 10.7 10.5 10.3 10.0 9.8

2.6 2.3 2.0 2.0 2.0 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.2 1.2

33.9 36.2 38.1 40.1 42.1 43.9 45.6 47.2 48.8 50.3 51.8 53.1 54.5 55.8 57.0 58.2 59.4 60.6

Source: Own draft from 438 papers extracted from the Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).

on expatriates. However, the word ‘theory’ is only present in 40 papers, while ‘models’ more than double the former with 96 papers. It seems that we are still at the stage of empirically testing the few existing theories on the topic of expatriation. The relevance of the Asiatic zone (China/Chinese, Japan/Japanese) can be observed when investigating expatriates, especially with the multinational corporations investing in the area in spite of the great differences that require particular attention due to cultural and regulatory issues. Figure 2 depicts the proximity plot of words which were found closest to the essential words ‘expatriate’ (i.e. co-occurrence). We have split the bar into three parts in order to try to find out whether a pattern exists in their distribution. Initially, we observed that the singular noun ‘expatriate’ is used more commonly. It may mean that the undertaken research deals with individuals rather than with a group of human resources. Besides this, the noun referring to the process (‘expatriation’) is commonly used the least (i.e. nevertheless, for a deeper understanding of this phenomenon there is a need for more empirical research on the process). Some exceptions that were observed are the combination of expatriation with mobility, antecedents, corporations, turnover and gender. In all these cases, expatriation is the most commonly proximal word instead of expatriate/s. As we have seen in the case of the top cited papers, the gender (in particular the spouse/s) seems to be a very relevant issue when speaking about critical human factors



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Figure 2. Proximity plot of words related to ‘expatriate’ (listed by share of number of papers). Source: Own draft from 438 papers extracted from the Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).

(i.e. the family concerns). The top-10 most frequent and proximal words to ‘expatriate’ were adjustment, management, cultural, international, performance, cross, managers, assignment/s, human and training. The emphasis is put on those managerial aspects which deal with the key issues in this field: the manager perspective and HRM practices, where culture and training are some of the essential means and performance seems to be the goal. Finally, a conceptual map has been built with keywords by classifying them into clusters according to co-occurrence, where the dimension of the globe represents the frequency of occurrence (see Figure 3). It is also relevant to note the distance among the different words in this figure, as it speaks about the proximity of the words in the cooccurrence. The software was asked to classify them into 10 clusters to facilitate the identification of the main concepts that are being researched in this field. Three main themes are the most relevant according to the cloud of globes depicted in the conceptual map: HRM (clouds of words at the bottom), with particular attention to the links between the multinational and subsidiaries; the cultural and individual perspectives (clouds in the upper-left corner), which include the need for adjustment and assignment in cross-cultural environment and international organizations, where the learning-training process seems to play a key role; and the key relationship between managers and employees, dealing with selection and satisfaction with the aim of achieving improvement in the turnover through


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Figure 3. Conceptual map of keywords classified into 10 clusters (proximity relationship). Source: Own draft from 438 papers extracted from the Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).

commitment. The other clusters are less numerous in the globe and less relevant in terms of frequency (i.e. size of the globe). The first theme mainly addresses the HRM in multinational corporations and subsidiaries, which is quite often researched from different angles such as strategy or investment. It is usually related to creation of joint ventures and/or knowledge transfer between headquarters and subsidiaries in multinational corporations. As for the second theme, the cultural perspective, it seems that the emphasis is put on facing one of the main issues: the assignments in international business. It is usually researched from the learning-training issue as a means to achieve the required adjustment (adaptation) in situations where culture clash may be relevant (in multicultural environments). Some other mixed themes are related to the geographical scope of research conducted (mainly the Asiatic zone, such as China and Japan, with the underlying US perspective). It seems that research in this field is too focused on treating this zone while others receive only little attention from academics. It seems that those zones claim particular attention in line with the dynamics of international investments. However, other relevant economies, such as the world transitional economies, also seem to call for empirical research that would steer reinforcing the results of previous studies in search of a universal theory. Secondary clusters in the map (Figure 3) deal with gender and careers, career development in repatriation cases and future assignments, dealing with global staffing and the social (and family) support required for working abroad. We would like to draw attention to the distance among the three main clusters. The relevant distance between expatriate/s and the relationship established between managers and employees may imply that such ties have not been treated profoundly. It also seems that the psychological approach to HRM is weak. Surprisingly, global staffing is far away from the manager – employee relationship in this field of research. The gender approach seems to have a weak tie with almost all of the other clusters, as well as the family issues. Additional insights may be provided if we analyze the words in the titles (see Table 6). We have only included words which represent more than 60% of frequency in cumulative terms listed by the number of papers in which they appear. Unsurprisingly, expatriate/s is predominant in up to 232 of the 438 papers analyzed. Only 55 words have been used in the titles of the said papers. However, as many as 16 words (30%) account for over 60% of


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Table 6. Frequency of words in the paper’s title.

Words in the title


Expatriate/s International Cultural/culture Adjustment Management/managing China Managers Assignments MNCs/multinational Japan/Japanese Study

Number of papers

Percentage share of papers (n ¼ 438)

Share of frequency Sfreq ¼ 1346 (%)

Cumulative share of frequency (%)

232 62 57 55 52 46 44 39 37 34 30

53.0 14.2 13.0 12.6 11.9 10.5 10.0 8.9 8.4 7.8 6.8

17.2 4.6 4.2 4.1 3.9 3.4 3.3 2.9 2.7 2.5 2.2

17.2 21.8 26.1 30.2 34.0 37.4 40.7 43.6 46.4 48.9 51.1

Source: Own draft from 438 papers extracted from the Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted in 2 April 2012).

occurrences. They focus the ideas on words which express the key issues under research: international, culture, management, multinational –subsidiaries, adjustment, assignments, etc. It must be highlighted that either China or Japan/Japanese appear in 8– 10% of papers, which shows the relevance of the theme in those regions, characterized as the main receptors of foreign investments. The performance point of view is also relevant, although it is not in the mainstream. We should also note that ‘theory’ has only been used in the title of 4 of the 438 papers analyzed, as a collateral approach instead of the main background in all of those cases (see Table 6). Finally, a conceptual map for the words in the titles was built (Figure 4) to analyze their proximity and frequency. Obviously, in terms of frequency (the size of the globe), ‘expatriate’ attains large values. HRM is a relevant cloud in a number of different globes, noting that this is the main approach to this field. It is linked to the multinational – subsidiaries tie and to the need-for-performance one. The other relevant cluster according

Figure 4. Conceptual map of words in the title classified into 10 clusters (proximity relationship). Source: Own draft from 438 papers extracted from the Web of Science – Social Science Citation Index (consulted on 2 April 2012).


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to the size of the globes is related to the adjustment process, training and cross-cultural issues in the binomial China – Western. Nevertheless, a relevant dispersion in the different clusters of globes can be observed, which implies that researchers have used them in the title without a clear pattern of proximity (see Figure 4). Therefore, the ongoing research in the last four decades shows the paths and streams developed in this field, which seems to be closely related to the needs and trends in the multinational corporations/subsidiaries and the HRM function. However, this review would remain incomplete if some information about the underlying theories throughout the research on expatriates in the last four decades were not mentioned. Table 7 shows 14 papers in which the word ‘theory’ was used explicitly either in the titles or in the keywords. In fact, it was used in only 4 titles while in the other 10 papers it was used in the keywords. That means that the theoretical background is usually implicit in the mainly empirical research undertaken to date. Theorists in HRM practices have extensively investigated the topic. However the main underlying foundations belong to two different streams: theory of agency and theory of transactions cost. Both of them seem to be very useful to deal with the multinational and subsidiary relationships. Some other foundations come from psychological relationships, for instance the theory of expectations or the theory of integrative social contracts whose foundations may be said to belong to the theory of contract in presence of asymmetric information; that is, related to agency theory and compensation theories. We also note that most of the attempts of the approaches from an explicit theory have been conducted recently, from 2008 onward. The most recent attempts have also included the resource-based view of the firm to deal with knowledge management which may represent one of the most fruitful future paths for extending the utility of expatriate research. Institutionalists have also contributed with a particular point of view concerning how the external framework in multinational corporations may play a role in managing expatriates efficiently. As shown, the main attempts to build a specific theory on expatriate management have only explained a part of the complex reality behind the individuals and organizational issues. In fact, of the 14 papers, only one of them seems to attempt at building a specific framework to develop a theory for strategic global human resource staffing (Harvey, Speier and Novecevic 2001; see Table 7). On the whole, research on expatriation has largely been focused on HRM practices. Following the expatriate cycle discussed by Bonache, Brewster and Suutari (2001), research has been centered on training and development (up to 25% of 438 articles), selection (15%) and repatriation (14%), while preparation was explicitly mentioned by a marginal 1.5%. The literature review and research agenda on reentry made by Szkudlarek (2010) and the eclectic review of expatriate success elaborated upon by Avril and Magnini (2007) is meritorious. The results seem to articulate that the time has come to affix the fragmented results together. A meta-analysis method would perhaps be the most promising technique for this task, as performed by Bausch and Krist (2007), for example, to summarize the impact of internationalization on performance in international business research. Summary and conclusions: what we know and what we do not know after four decades The main aim of this paper was to provide an in-depth review of literature in this field after four decades of research. A content analysis was conducted of up to 438 papers that have


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Table 7. Main underlying foundations on expatriate research. Authors

Underlying foundations

Main contribution


Authors with the word ‘theory’ in the title Caligiuri, Phillips, Lazarova, Theory of met Tarique and Burgi (2001) expectations

Expatriate adjustment is more successful if made through tailored cross-cultural training Theory-based framework for Harvey, Speier and Novecevic Combination of theory Strategic Global Human Resource (2001) of agency and theory Staffing (SGHR): an inpatriate of expectancy manager candidate pool enables an organization to manage SGHR staffing needs proactively Spicer, Dunfee and Bailey Theory of integrative How expatriates evaluate ethical (2004) social contracts dilemmas in a different way when working abroad: local norms moderated the effect of national context Festing and Maletzky (2011) Theory of structuration þ Leadership adjustment predicts performance of cross-cultural elements of culturally adjustment of expatriates, but endorsed implicit leadership adjustment it is a leadership theory reciprocal process Authors with the word ‘theory’ in the keywords Kabst (2004) Transaction cost theory

Bjorkman et al. (2004) Tarique, Schuler and Gong (2006)

Bailey and Spicer (2007)

Brock, Shenkar, Shoham and Siscovick (2008)

Collings, Morley and Gunnigle (2008)

Bonache, Sanchez and Zarraga-Oberty (2009)

Assignment of expatriates into key joint ventures positions is explained by transaction cost theory Agency theory and MNCs influence interunit knowledge socialization theory transfers Agency theory Differences in the perception of assignments of expatriates versus third country nationals and host country nationals is mainly explained by the binomial person – environment fit Integrative social Local norms moderated the effect of contracts theory national context on expatriates evaluation of ethical dilemmas when working abroad Agency theory and Expatriate deployment is a transaction costs theory control function predicted by home country culture dimensions with transaction cost and agency repercussions (rather than culture in the aggregate) Agency theory Explain the composing of the top management team in the international subsidiary, in which third country nationals play a key role Equity theory Expatriates compensations and pay differential perception of third country nationals and host country nationals affect outcomes such as performance and turnover (Continued)

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Table 7 – continued.


Authors

Underlying foundations

Main contribution

Lauring and Selmer (2009)

Intergroup contact theory

Il Park and Glaister (2009)

Resource-based view of the firm theory

Soltani and Wilkinson (2011)

Institutional theory

Expatriate compounds serving to provide resident expatriates with a safe and comfortable environment successfully maintain expatriates working abroad Determinants of knowledge acquisition (KA) are contextdependent in international joint ventures: the participation of foreign expatriates is a key to boost KA Success or failure of international assignees depend on the congruence between Headquarters and international assignees’ orientations as well as on international assignees and host country culture

Source: Own analyses from authors cited.

dealt with ‘expatriate’ research. This field can be described by 105 different keywords and 55 different words used in their titles. This in-depth literature review may be useful to complete empirically the missing research, opening new avenues and approaches to this topic. Additionally, it may provide a path for the approximation to building a theory on managing expatriates in a next stage of evolving research. As shown, the ongoing research in this field has been focused mainly on HRM, culture and career development in multinational corporations, as well as on the relationships between headquarters and subsidiaries and between the different subsidiaries. The research has been conducted in geographical terms mainly in the Asiatic zone from a predominant US viewpoint. Virtually, all of the research has been conducted from an empirical perspective based mainly on HRM practices and theories. Further research is called for in order to expand the narrow scope of investigations in this field to date. Also, additional research is required on economies other than China and Japan, with clear focus on cultural differences in the findings. This may offer interesting results for building a future theory. For instance, transitional economies, other than Asiatic, may also require foreign investments and human resources to be hired in order to boost their transitions successfully. Moreover, the need for extending the research beyond the multinational corporations may be suggested as SMEs have to face challenges pertinent to their successful internationalization. Therefore, hiring expatriates may facilitate this critical process in accordance with the classical theory on internationalization assuming such processes as knowledge-dependent (Johanson and Vahlne 1977, 1990). In a wider scope, expatriates may also assist in another key factor for competitiveness: innovation and entrepreneurship. Expatriates are usually characterized as open-minded individuals who have absorbed other cultures, and hiring expatriates in innovation teams may make a difference. In the case of entrepreneurship, classical theory considers a four-step process through which an entrepreneur establishes a new firm (van Gelderen, Thurik and Bosma 2005): intentionality, opportunity recognition, enhancing resources and exchanging with



17

the market. It may be expected that expatriates possess relevant entrepreneurial attitudes. An empirical research on this would be twofold: expatriates as will-be entrepreneurs (are they more successful than non-expatriates in pre-start up phases?) and as enhancers of entrepreneurial orientation within a firm. Regarding the lack of a universal theory on expatriate management, at least two new questions can be opened at sight of the review done. On the one hand, a neopositivist approach to the process of building a theory requires that an empirical work exhaustively may be tested in several different scenarios to test the validity of the hypotheses enunciated previously; hence the question here is whether the plentiful existing empirical corpus has dealt with rather different cases as to enable reviewing the universality of the assumptions. A wider scope in geography (other than Asiatic), approach (other than the US viewpoint), object (other than multinational corporations) and organizational structure (other than hierarchical relationship) is perhaps required. Empirical research should try to reveal what is common and what is not dependent on the different cultures and situations. On the other hand, it may open a discussion on whether expatriates management is but a particular case in either HRM or human resource development theories. Nevertheless, additional research is called for to assess the impact of expatriates on several performance indicators, most of them related to any type of intangible outcomes (e.g. innovativeness, knowledge transfer, entrepreneurial orientation, internationalization). To summarize, and following on the research agenda on expatriate suggested by Bonache et al. (2001), future research should draw attention to three big issues: converging empirical results on the expatriate cycle, enlarging the field towards new phenomena and broadening the topic. Converging empirical results on the expatriate cycle The last four decades have been productive in terms of fragmented results over the expatriate cycle (selection, preparation, training and development, repatriation). These pieces, which have been tested in diverse contexts and organizations, should be integrated and rationalized into a general theory. The results will show whether, for instance, there is an optimal geographical scope regarding adjustment and adaptation to contextual conditions. The appraisal of expatriates’ performance is also a relevant issue calling for an integration of empirical results. Meta-analysis is the most promising methodology for this, and it has hardly been used by scholars in this field. Noticeable examples include work of Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer and Luk (2005) applied to the case of adjustment, or from the psychological viewpoint that of Mol, Born, Willemsen and Van der Molen (2005) to predict expatriates’ job performance. This goal of predicting and explaining performance should be addressed by scholars, because of its relevant utility for practitioners in almost any situation and organization, an approach that is not commonly followed in this field. Enlarging the expatriate research As shown, expatriate research has been centered on the multinational and US perspectives. New phenomena and contexts are challenging the predominant gradual internationalization process: international new ventures, new generation of internet native, global carrier expatriates, own initiative expatriates, international SMEs or not-for-profit and governmental organizations – all of these also deserve scholars’ attention. These organizations offer some opportunities for exploring the differences across diverse

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organizational models, culturally different to multinationals, in order to move a step forward to the general theory of managing expatriates. The cluster or industrial districts phenomena, under a networking approach to international business, may also offer new research avenues beyond multinationals. The integrative field of strategic IHRM (Schuler, Budhwar and Florkowski 2002; Delbridge et al. 2011) or, to put it in other words, the relevance of the human capital in creating a competitive advantage is an opportunity for broadening the research on the expatriate phenomenon. Under the resource-based view of the firm, expatriates are invited to play a determinant role in any type of organization acting internationally. The current global competition and economic context may offer, in short, other promising research avenues of increasing interest: the case of the enterprises from emerging or transitional economies entering into the Western economies. Should this inverse approach deliver the same results, then the US overestimated perspective would need further research yet. Longitudinal studies continue to be in demand, despite the inherent difficulties in obtaining a huge amount of data with time. Broadening the topic The results of the literature review show that the focus has been on the expatriate cycle. However, other issues remain underestimated in the literature. Equal opportunities and gender issues continue to be marginal issues in spite of the call for research by Bonache et al. (2001). Sociological and psychological approaches are still marginal in this field. Other non-exclusively business-related issues may be of interest, for example the circumferential problems such as citizenship, identity or family concerns, as well as the role of expatriate’s spouses play in identifying criteria unique to expatriates. A possibly missing, although interesting approaches are expatriate decision outcomes, risk social learning theory, cross-cultural adjustment and application of cognitive dissonance theory in coaching team management. Expatriate research has dealt with expatriates from the individual viewpoint while disregarding the fact that it may not be a question of a businessperson alone. This is related to the myth of whether an ideal ‘international manager’ may exist or not (Forster 2000), which could be better addressed from a team perspective, for example multiple mentoring framework and how mentoring relationship increase carriers, self-managed careers along paths other than the linear progression of responsibility and pay in the organization (Banai and Harry 2004; Baruch 2004), and boundaryless and protean nature of carriers (Hall 2004; Briscoe and Hall 2006; Agullo and Egawa 2008). In addition, evolving research on strategic management calls for including additional variables into the equation, particularly those related with intangible elements such as knowledge management issues (e.g. Bjorkman et al. 2004), creativeness and innovativeness or entrepreneurial orientation. In summary, after four decades of research in the expatriate field, we have gained valuable knowledge in only partial and fragmented dimensions. New research, either empirical or theoretical is still required to help deal properly with this potentially driving force for, at least, the success in the internationalization process of any type of organization. The parties interested in this will benefit from advancing research: organizations and expatriates will be able to design and implement successful IHRM programs; public policies will be able to recognize, cope with and reduce this type of migrants’ problems either outward or return; and society will benefit from increasing cultural exchanges, which in the end may be mutually beneficial for enterprises to enlarge their markets. The groundwork for a general theory on managing expatriates has been paved, although there still remains a long journey ahead in order for the scholars to reach this goal.


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Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the action editor Professor Michel Dickmann for their suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.


5.

We thank the first reviewer for suggesting the inclusion of this historical perspective in order to clarify the right place of the expatriation topic in Social Sciences. si ¼ share of the journal (represented by the percentage of share on the total as a number). In our case, si is taken as the percentage – therefore, the top-bound is 10,000. In this paper, the FFI index is calculated by taking si as a singular number. Black and Gregersen, both authors have published some joint articles and hence citations may be referred to such papers (i.e. counted in duplicate). The same may be applied to Turnley and Feldman who have co-authored at least one paper. In this case, it is the same paper co-authored by both authors, Rosenzweig and Nohria.

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