Expatriates’ motivations for going abroad. The role of organisational embeddedness for career satisfaction and job effort
| Pages | 552-570 |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-11-2017-0284 |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Christian Linder |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Expatriates’motivations for
going abroad
The role of organisational embeddedness for
career satisfaction and job effort
Christian Linder
Management Department, ESCP Europe Business School, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose –It is widely accepted that expatriates have career expectations and motivations for working
abroad that differ according to whether their posting is self-initiated or assigned by their employer. These
factors also affect organisational embeddedness in the host country organisation. The purpose of this paper is
to analyse job effort and career satisfaction in expatriates working for foreign organisations and investigates
how these concepts depend on expatriates’initial career plans and motivations for working abroad.
Design/methodology/approach –Data were collected from two groups: managers of assigned expatriate
workers and self-initiated expatriate workers. The surveys assessed workers’motivations for going abroad,
and differences between the two groups were compared by analysis of variance (ANOVA). A partial least
squares (PLS) analysis was used to assess the effect of motivation on job performance.
Findings –There were positive relationships between the degree of organisational embeddedness in
institutions abroad and job performance and career satisfaction. Perceptions of embeddedness depended on
workers’mindsets regarding their career ambitions.
Practical implications –This paper shows that self-initiated and assigned expatriates (AEs) require
different staffing strategies, since variation in their motivations to go abroad are likely to affect their job effort
in host organisations.
Originality/value –By linking expatriate motivation to go abroad with job performance and career
satisfaction, contributions are made to the discussion of the differences between self-initiated and AEs.
Keywords Expatriates, Motivation, Job performance, Career satisfaction, Boundaryless career,
Organizational embeddedness
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The ongoing trend in using expatriates for knowledge transfer, control or process
harmonisation in multinational corporations has encouraged researchers to analyse people’s
motives for going abroad in greater depth (Thorn, 2009). Thus, we currently have a broad
understanding of the different reasons people seek to undertake responsibility in a foreign
work environment. As a result, many scholars agree that the generic term “expatriates”
should be divided into subgroups according to their motivations for going abroad (Selmer
and Lauring, 2011). Proponents of such differentiation argue that, as the phenomenon of
expatriation is heterogeneous, it is difficult to develop theory about expatriation and
understand its practical implications without categorising it into sub-types (Cerdin and Le
Pargneux, 2010). One reason for this heterogeneity is the fact that people’s motivations and
intentions to go abroad may differently affect work outcomes such as staff retention (Reiche
et al., 2011), job satisfaction (Lee, 2005), willingness to adhere to the psychological contract
(Pate and Scullion, 2010) and career satisfaction (Ariss, 2010).
Accordingly, scholars have developed various ways of differentiating expatriates into
subgroups, of which self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) and assigned expatriates (AEs) are the
most common ( Jokinen et al., 2008). The first group refers to individuals who relocate to a
foreign country on their own initiative. These individuals aspire to work abroad and
actively take the initiative for such an undertaking. The second group denotes individuals
who are sent abroad at the instigation of the employing company and who usually receive
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 41 No. 3, 2019
pp. 552-570
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-11-2017-0284
Received 28 November 2017
Revised 7 June 2018
16 July 2018
23 July 2018
Accepted 24 July 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
552
ER
41,3
an expatriate contract (Peltokorpi and Froese, 2009). In conclusion, many researchers
suggest that SIEs work abroad for personal motives such as self-development while AEs
primarily work abroad with the ambition of attaining job- or organisational-related goals
(Peltokorpi, 2008; Suutari and Brewster, 2000).
While further distinctions between SIEs and AEs have been proposed, such as frequent
travellers or so-called FELOs ( foreign executives in local organisations) (Arp et al., 2013;
Fenwick, 2004; McNulty and Vance, 2017), our understanding of how different types of
expatriates are distinct in terms of their performance abroad remains very limited. In this
regard, there is evidence that the motivation to go abroad may serve as a proxy for future
behaviour. For instance, an individual’s desire for significant accomplishment is known to
motivatecertain behaviour, whichimplies that variance in themotivation to go abroad may be
associated withvariance in behaviour (McClelland, 1991). However, attemptsto observe such
relationships among the various types of international assignments are scarce. At present,
there is limitedknowledge about the situationsin which AEs and SIEs behave differently,nor
is it currently clear in which contexts they provide a more promising staffing alternative.
Given this limitation in the actual literature, this paper investigates the extent to which
motivation to go abroad may influence expatriates’behaviour during a foreign assignment.
Assumedly, the motivation to work abroad may have far-reaching implications for
expatriation management because it may affect job performance and career satisfaction in
the host country in multiple ways. By analysing this question, the present paper responds to
the long-standing call for further research into the different forms of international
assignments to better understand how the various motivations of AEs and SIEs affect their
job performance and career satisfaction abroad.
Admittedly, there have been multiple attempts to better understand SIEs and AEs in
isolation (Doherty, 2013; Al Ariss and Özbilgin, 2010; Selmer and Lauring, 2012; 2011). To
date, existing comparisons of SIEs and AEs have focussed on differences in career
prospects (Cerdin and Le Pargneux, 2010), career capital ( Jokinen et al., 2008), cultural
adjustment (Froese and Peltokorpi, 2013) and talent management (Vaiman and Haslberger,
2013), as well as control, transfer and management of foreign organisations (Tharenou,
2013). With the exception of Froese and Peltokorpi’s (2013) work, satisfaction and
performance, in both expatriate groups, has not yet received much specific attention. Given
these limitations, this paper asks the research question:
RQ1. To what extent do AEs and SIEs differ in their job performance and career
satisfaction while working abroad?
Based on the concept of organisational embeddedness –a job-related dimension from job
embeddedness theory ( JET; Hom et al., 2009)[1] –this paper theorises that the motivation to
go abroad differentially affects SIEs’and AEs’perceptions of embeddedness in the
structures of the host country organisation. It further demonstrates that the motivations to
go abroad influence organisational embeddedness during foreign assignments. In turn,
organisational embeddedness accounts for job performance and career satisfaction.
With this work, three gaps in the current literature are addressed. First, this paper adds a
deeper understanding of how motivation and organisa tional embeddedness affect
international assignees, which is an important ongoing discussion (Tharenou and
Caulfield, 2010; Harris et al., 2011; Ren et al., 2014). This study explains how organisational
embeddedness differently predicts performance, as well as subjective and objective career
success, for AEs and SIEs (Linder, 2016). Second, a contribution is made to understanding
the different types of expatriates; a discussion which has emerged in recent years and still
persists. Accordingly, the evidence generally supports conceptual approaches to separating
expatriates into different groups on empirical grounds. Finally, this paper demonstrates that
scholars and practitioners need to pay more attention to the different qualities of motivation,
553
Career
satisfaction
and job effort
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