The Work and Personal Life Interface in the International Career Context: An Introduction

Abstract

The globalization of business has led to an increasing number of people working in the international business environment and moving across borders for their work. International work now takes several different forms, from long-term assignments lasting several years to short-term assignments of some months or to frequent international travelling (Collings et al. 2007;Suutari and Brewster 2009). The most extensive attention in both research and practice has been directed towards the management of organizational expatriates sent abroad by their employer typically for a few years, for example, to manage international business operations abroad, transfer knowledge across a unit of an MNC and to coordinate the activities of MNCs across borders. With access to the long-term experience of MNCs employing expatriates and the related large-scale research done among such expatriates, we already know a great deal about issues such as adjustment problems, training needs and repatriation challenges. Issues affecting spouses and the family have also attracted expatriation research, albeit in-depth examples are relatively scarce (Caligiuri et al. 1998;Haslberger and Brewster 2008;Richardson 2007).More recently the discussion on international careers has been broadened to involve other kinds of international employees such as those who search for work opportunities outside their home countries on their own initiative, who are called self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) (Suutari and Brewster 2000;Cerdin and Le Pargneux 2010; Bieman and Andresen 2010). Those individuals have taken the management of their careers into their own hands and have searched for jobs abroad unassisted by an employer. Such self-initiated mobility is on the rise owing to the combined effects of the globalization of business life; the changing nature of careers, that have become more attuned to increased mobility across organizational and L. Mäkelä ( ) • V. Suutari

Expatriates' identity salience, work stressors, and work–nonwork conflict: Moderating role of gender and marital status

“…The existing literature on international management and work–family‐ related issues has focused largely on the importance of work‐life balance by viewing expatriation issues through the lens of organizational expatriates, self‐initiated expatriates, and international business travelers (Mäkelä & Suutari, ). Taking this idea forward, the present study emphasizes the importance of differentiating expatriates based on their identity salience, which could in turn help organizations contextualize various challenges faced by work‐ and nonwork‐salient individuals.…”

Clash of cultures? German Expatriates’ Work-Life Boundary Adjustment in South Korea

“…In consequence, Koreans tend to strongly integrate work and life and are less likely to develop thick boundaries between the two domains. Our research highlights that expatriates do not only experience general issues with their work-life balance (Mäkelä and Suutari, 2015), but need to handle particular culture-dependent temporal, behavioral, physical, and mental influences on work-life boundaries (Nippert-Eng, 1996) which can additionally challenge expatriates' work-life balance.…”

“…However, highly integrated boundaries during expatriation have been considered as a potential threat to the perceived work-life balance of expatriates (Mäkelä and Suutari, 2015) and prior research has examined coping strategies expatriates employ to cope with work-life conflicts abroad (e.g. Mäkelä and Suutari, 2011).…”

“…First, we enrich the nascent debate on the work-life balance of expatriates (e.g. Lazarova, Westman and Shaffer, 2010;Mäkelä and Suutari, 2015;Shaffer, Harrison, Gilley and Luk, 2001) by introducing work-life boundary theory (Nippert-Eng, 1996). Our cross-cultural study on German expatriates in Korea empirically showed that while expatriates often perceive high pressure on their work-life balance (Caliguri and Lazarova, 2005;Richardson, McKenna, Dickie and Kelliher, 2015), this is also influenced by the particular cultural situation in the host country.…”

“…Against this backdrop, expatriates face severe conflicts between expectations at work and their private lives and frequently leave their host country before their contract ends (Kraeh, Froese, and Park, 2015). In consequence, managing the boundaries between work and life is acknowledged as one of the key challenges associated with expatriation (Mäkelä and Suutari, 2015).…”