Research on flexible work practices has focused primarily on social relationships, individual identity, work/work-life balance experience and performance. This paper aims to add another dimension by focusing on space and, specifically, the performance of space by professional flexworkers as they reorder their home and work lives through the process of becoming flexworkers. Drawing on Law's 'modes of ordering' and Latourian actor network theory, as well as on Beyes and Steyaert's recent contribution on 'performing space', the paper considers how flexworkers themselves reorganize space(s) as an ongoing accomplishment. The purpose and contribution is to offer an alternative to the view that the home and work are rigid containers fixed in social structure, to one that views them as self-referential space(s), reordered by flexworkers as they seek to 'keep the social moving'. The paper is based on an empirical study of employees in a Canadian subsidiary of a large hi-tech multinational corporation. It examines organizational policy documents and interviews with managerial and non-managerial flexworkers to identify how social and spatial relations are reordered and performed.

Whilst globalisation has led to increasing international mobility, the contemporary expatriate management literature has focused on managers and corporate executives who are sent on an overseas appointment by their employers. By comparison, self‐selecting expatriates remain an under‐researched group. Specifically, at a time when internationalisation is a major trend in higher education very little is known about expatriate academics as an example of self‐selecting expatriates. Drawing on a qualitative study of British academics, this article suggests that metaphor may be a useful tool for developing our understanding of self‐selecting expatriates. It then discusses the four metaphors, which have emerged from the study. Finally it shows how those metaphors can be used to facilitate better management practices not only for the growing number of expatriate academics but also for self‐selecting expatriates more generally.

Outlines the conflict‐handling style of a representative sample of 303 Singaporeans. Using the Thomas‐Kilmann conflict mode instrument, investigates some interesting gender, age, role and occupational differences in conflict‐handling style. Suggests that, while Western thought and practice emphasize collaboration in resolving conflict in organizations, the cultural value systems of different Asian cultures emphasize unassertiveness. Suggests that the issue may be about the conflict between traditionalism and modernism, and that economic development brings with it an inevitable change in the psychological practice of capitalism.

Drawing on a qualitative case study of 51 organizational self-initiated expatriates (OSIE) in a professional services firm, this article investigates the role of networks during expatriation and, specifically, in the development of learning that is beneficial to both the individual expatriate and the global operations of the firm. First, we investigate the extent to which individual motivations to engage in OSIE impact on the development of networks. Second, we investigate individual's experiences of network development. Third, we investigate individual perceptions of the benefits of networks for both organizations and individual actors. The paper will report that professionals initiating their own expatriation develop continually expanding and composite networks such that mobility and networks evolve in a seemingly symbiotic relationship. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of the role of agency in network development and extends our understanding of organizational self-initiated expatriation as a relatively underresearched phenomenon.

Using a postcolonial analytic frame and critique this article investigates the nature of the discourse used by 24 North American business leaders to describe, understand and make sense of the economic development of China and India and contemporary international encounters. In particular the article investigates how business leaders discursively characterize this 'threat', how they (re)present China and India and, how they discursively construct the requirements of a response to this 'threat'. An analysis of the interviews indicates the persistence of the discourse of (neo)colonialism (Orientalism) in the construction of the Other within the context of a view of China and India as developing and progressing towards a North American ideal. Despite this, North American business leaders also show ambivalence and uncertainty towards China and India. On the one hand they laud their success while damning them for their apparently exploitative social, economic and workplace systems and practices. Moreover, while they promote a Western development discourse concerning China and India, North American business leaders recognize that China and India are becoming centres of global economic power that are increasingly challenging the global hegemony of the United States. The article ends with a conclusion on the contribution of the article and in particular points to the value of Bhabha's notion of the in-between' spaces as a way forward for understanding developments in the global business environment.