The evolving field of global mobility: responses to global volatility (2013–2022)

Abstract

PurposeA decade has passed since Dabic et al. (2015) published a systematic review of the evolution of the expatriate literature from 1970 to 2012. Moreover, the past five years have been turbulent, with many global crises affecting organizational approaches to the global movement of people, particularly expatriate workers. Thus, this article seeks to understand how global mobility has continued to evolve during such turbulence and propose avenues for future research.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors undertook a constructive replication (Köhler and Cortina, 2021) of the systematic literature review conducted by Dabic et al. (2015), informed by guidelines offered by Donthu et al. (2021) for the period 2013 to 2022. The authors conducted a performance analysis of 1,517 academic articles about expatriates and broader globally mobile workers. Additionally, the authors analyzed all expatriate-related special issues published in the past decade and provide a narrative review of seminal works from the past five years.FindingsThe expatriation field has grown exponentially; greater attention has been paid to contextualizing research, particularly concerning emerging markets, although the field remains Western-dominant. This analysis stresses the increasingly strategic nature of expatriation at a time when global staffing has become dramatically challenging. Thus, this review highlights the need for more interdisciplinarity at different levels between expatriation and the field of strategy. The authors argue the need for a multifaceted understanding of the expatriation experience.Originality/valueThe authors offer a constructive replication of a bibliometric literature review extended by a narrative analysis to complement a critical perspective on a large set of bibliographic data on the broad subject of expatriation. This addition offers an integrated view of the different themes identified by the bibliometric analysis and paves the way for future replication studies to examine how fields evolve.

Mental health and expatriate psychological adjustment post-COVID: towards a new framework

“…Recent research has observed long-term mental health concerns for those who have had COVID-19 (Reskati et al, 2023;Badinlou et al, 2022;Matsumoto et al, 2022). Therefore, with IAs continuing to be utilized at levels equal to or greater than pre-COVID times (Ridgway and Langinier, 2023), in addition to mental health challenges, the onslaught of COVID-19 can also be termed as a significant external circumstance that has further exacerbated expatriates' psychological adjustment (Tripathi and Singh, 2021). However, very little empirical research is available on how COVID-19 has further exacerbated expatriates' mental health challenges when sent on IAs and how their concerns relating to their psychological adjustment to the host country can be addressed (Sahoo et al, 2022).…”

“…International assignments (IAs) are growing exponentially (Ridgway and Langinier, 2023). Multinational enterprises (MNE) utilization of expatriates (expats) requires a comprehensive IHRM strategy that is informed, in part, by a complex understanding of the facets that impact an expatriate's psychological adjustment.…”