The authors investigate employer practices toward expatriate managers and how those practices relate to retention-relevant outcomes (e.g., organizational commitment, intent to quit, and intent to return early to a domestic assignment). The psychological contract is investigated as a mediator of this relationship. A model in which the psychological contract mediates the relationship between organizational practices and retention-relevant outcomes is empirically constructed. The authors also refine the construct of the psychological contract and report managers' experiences as expatriates.

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The construct of cultural intelligence, recently introduced to the management literature, has enormous potential in helping to explain effectiveness in cross cultural interactions. However, at present, no generally accepted definition or operationalization of this nascent construct exists. In this article, we develop a conceptualization of cultural intelligence that addresses a number of important limitations of previous definitions. We present a concise definition of cultural intelligence as a system of interacting abilities, describe how these elements interact to produce culturally intelligent behavior, and then identify measurement implications.

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The ways team members choose to influence each other and the political processes that take place within the team have important implications for the team’s effectiveness. We present an exploratory investigation of the ways both phenomena occur in global virtual teams. Based on interviews with team members and managers, combined with existing knowledge of these processes, we present a preliminary model that includes familiarity, team centrality and task focus as variables mediating the relationship between the multicultural and virtual aspects of the teams and the use of influence and politics. Our findings also suggest that the use of hard influence tactics and political actions is milder in global virtual teams in relation to collocated teams.