Repatriate Career Development
Within the framework of a globally interlaced business environment, foreign experience is considered to be a feature higher managers should possess. Expatriation and career development therefore appear as two interrelated aspects of human resource management. On the one hand, companies assign promising employees to subsidiaries abroad in order to complement their existing capabilities by first-hand international management experience. On the other hand, those accepting the offer mostly do so expecting the assignment to positively reflect on their professional advancement upon repatriation. Career development hence seems to be an outcome relevant to both parties involved in an expatriation – the assigning company as well as the assigned employee.
Consequently, the issue of career advancement should be focal to expatriate management. From an organizational perspective, however, the strategic integration of those two substantial aspects of human resource management appears to be in need for further improvement. As the demand for employees with a global mindset can be expected to increase steadily, our research focuses on the following questions:
- Which role does career development play within the framework of expatriate management?
- Which career-related outcomes do expatriate assignments entail?
- To what extent do organizational and individual differences affect career-related expatriation outcomes?
- How can changing career attitudes be expected to influence expatriate management?