“I might be shot at!” exploring the drivers to work in hostile environments using an intelligent careers perspective

COVID-19 and self-initiated expatriate health workers: Spanish nurses in Germany

Purpose

Given that the incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) varies greatly between countries, it becomes relevant to explore self-initiated expatriate (SIE) health workers' perceptions of home vs host country safety during a global pandemic. Thus, the paper aims to study the effects of COVID-19 on the expatriation experience of Spanish SIE nurses in Germany, focussing on perceptions of home and host country safety as push/pull forces on their intentions to repatriate or stay.

Design/methodology/approach

Semi-structured interviews (n = 10) were conducted with Spanish SIE nurses in Germany between April/June 2020 followed by instant messaging interactions with the same participants in October/November 2020. Data analysis was assisted by NVivo software.

Findings

Overloaded by information from social networks about the impact of COVID-19 in Spain compared with the situation in Germany, Spanish SIE nurses had exacerbated feelings of stress, and some reported having experienced guilt for not being in their home country. Nevertheless, the contrasting impact and management of the crisis and its relative effect on health workers and the larger society in Spain and Germany reinforced the nurses' intention to stay in Germany.

Research limitations/implications

The research offers insights to organisations and public authorities involved with providing support to SIEs during crises, highlighting the implications of SIEs' social networks and dual allegiance to home and host countries during a global health emergency.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the growing literature on SIEs, whilst adding to the research on expatriates' well-being and safety during crises.

How do female engineers conceptualise career advancement in engineering: a template analysis

Purpose

Existing research has established that women drop out of engineering careers in part because of a dissatisfaction with their career development, but women's understanding of career development in engineering has been as yet largely unexplored. This paper aims to explore female engineers' experiences of navigating their careers and their perceptions of barriers to career development, through the lens of the intelligent career framework (ICF).

Design/methodology/approach

The in-depth interviews of this study were conducted with female engineers in the UK and analysed using template analysis.

Findings

The authors identified three structural barriers that participants felt hinder women's career development in engineering: (1) promotions are more likely to be given to people who are widely known – more often men; (2) promotions are more likely to be given to people on whom high status is conferred in this context – more often men and (3) promotions are more likely to be given to people who conform to the ideal worker ideology – more often men. The women also offered a series of counter-narratives in which they reframed the behaviour they witnessed as something other than sexism.

Originality/value

The findings highlight the significant and systemic bias against women's career development through gender stereotypes in workplaces and an implicitly gendered organisation that hinders the development of the three competencies needed for career advancement. The authors describe a range of counter-narratives that the participants use to help them to make sense of their experiences. Finally, the authors illustrate the application of the intelligent career framework (ICF) as a lens to view the career development culture of an organisation.

The influence of personality on individuals' expatriation willingness in the context of safe and dangerous environments

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which a destination's security level affects the relationship between personality traits and individuals' expatriation willingness.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors apply an experimental vignette methodology using a 2 × 1 between subjects-design with two destinations characterized by different security levels (dangerous vs. safe) among 278 participants (students and employees). Partial least squares multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) was employed to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The findings indicate that different personality variables appear to impact individuals' expatriation willingness depending on the security level of a destination: emotionality and conscientiousness predicted expatriation willingness to dangerous environments, whereas openness to experience predicted expatriation willingness to safe environments. The personality traits of honesty–humility, extraversion and agreeableness were not found to influence expatriation willingness in either scenario.

Practical implications

The study discusses a set of practical recommendations for the selection and the management of eligible individuals who are willing to expatriate to dangerous locations.

Originality/value

The study is among the first to examine the influence of personality on expatriation willingness in safe and dangerous environments at the same time. It advances prior research by providing a more nuanced understanding of the context-specific effects of personality on expatriation willingness.

International school teachers: precarity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

This article explores the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international school teachers, using the findings to theorise agency and elective precarity amongst self-initiated, middling expatriates.

Design/methodology/approach

Content analysis of online posts on a teaching abroad discussion forum is used to critically examine the thesis that international school educators form part of a global precariat (Bunnell, 2016; Poole, 2019a, 2019b). Thematic analysis charts participants' discussion of aspects of precarity as consequences of the pandemic.

Findings

The data suggest that whilst dimensions of precarity have been exacerbated by the pandemic some dimensions of privilege remain. The term elective precarity is employed to describe the position of international school teachers, and it is noted that the pandemic has eroded the sense of agency within precarity. Posts suggest that teachers are reluctant to be globally mobile when lacking this sense of agency.

Research limitations/implications

Further research is needed to establish whether agency and elective precarity are useful concepts for exploring the experiences of other self-initiated expatriates during the pandemic. There is a need for further research into the supply of international school educators as key enablers of other forms of global mobility.

Originality/value

The paper proposes two new concepts, elective precarity and agency within precarity, to capture the discourse of self-initiated expatriates. It contributes to the emerging literature charting the impact of the pandemic on self-initiated expatriation.

Expatriate management in hostile environments from a multi-stakeholder perspective – a systematic review

Purpose

The successful management of business expatriates and their families in hostile environments (HE) is a current concern for academics and human resources (HR) practitioners alike. Terrorism and other forms of violent crime have become salient topics on the public agenda, and international organizations are increasingly affected. Hence, scholarly interest in the HR implications for organizations sending staff to HEs has recently grown, and a nascent research area has emerged. This paper is the first systematic review synthesizing emerging literature in the field of expatriate management in HEs and its theoretical foundations, applying a multi-stakeholder perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

Following accepted review procedures, systematic searches were conducted across three major databases. Manual search in target journals provided additional scrutiny.

Findings

After analysing 28 articles, four main stakeholders were identified as follows: environments, expatriates, assigning organizations and the expatriates' social networks. Findings reveal the ways of how all stakeholders can affect expatiation success or be affected so that the success of the assignment is jeopardised.

Originality/value

Our paper illustrates how these diverse articles can be linked within a comprehensive multi-stakeholder framework and provides avenues for future research. We also shift attention to neglected theoretical perspectives that might further improve the understanding of expatriates in HEs while offering actionable guidance for managerial and organizational practices.

Unlocking inhibitors to women's expatriate careers: can job-related training provide a key?

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine what job-related training interventions female expatriates seek and can access in order to build necessary knowledge and skills to progress into further career-enhancing expatriate positions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a cross-sectional qualitative research approach, drawing upon semi-structured interviews in respect of organisational training practice with 26 current female expatriates and nine human resource, international assignments and training managers in two oil and gas exploration firms.

Findings

Budgets, time and travel restrictions and competitive business pressures constrain on-the-job training provision for expatriates. Assignees require specific knowledge and skills ahead of appointment to subsequent expatriate positions. HR personnel believe training provides appropriate knowledge and capability development, supporting women expatriates' career ambitions. Women assignees view training available within their current roles as insufficient or irrelevant to building human capital for future expatriate posts.

Research limitations/implications

Longitudinal research across a wider spectrum of industries is needed to help understand the effects of training interventions on women's access to future career-enhancing expatriation and senior management/leadership positions.

Practical implications

Organisations should ensure relevant technical skills training, clear responsibility for training provision, transparent and fair training allocation, positive communication regarding human capital outcomes and an inclusive culture that promotes expatriate gender diversity.

Originality/value

Set within the framework of human capital theory, this study identifies the challenges that female expatriates experience when seeking relevant job-related training to further their expatriate careers. It identifies clear mismatches between the views of HR and female assignees in relation to the value of job-related training offered and women's access to it.

Highway to Hell? Managing expatriates in crisis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework of severe expatriate crises focusing on the occurrence of “fit-dependent” crisis events, which is when the crisis is “man made” and triggered by expatriates’ maladjustment or acculturation stress in the host country. The authors focus on the causes, prevention and management of fit-dependent expatriate crises.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors develop a conceptual framework of fit-dependent expatriate crises that involves different levels of analysis.

Findings

The conceptual framework shows that crises can be triggered at micro, meso and macro levels ranging from the personal and family domains (micro), to the network and organisational domains (meso) as well as the host country domain (macro). The authors conceptualise these “domains of causes” as triggering maladjustment and acculturation stress that ultimately leads to a severe crisis event with correspondingly serious and potentially life-changing consequences. Furthermore, using a process perspective, the authors outline strategies for preventing and managing crises before, during and after the crisis occurs, discussing the support roles of various internal (organisational) and external (specialist) stakeholders.

Originality/value

Studying the link between expatriation and crises is a highly relevant research endeavour because severe crisis events will impact on HRM policies, processes and procedures for dealing with employees living abroad, and will create additional challenges for HRM beyond what could normally be expected. Using attribution theory to explain why organisational support and intervention to assist expatriates during a crisis is not always forthcoming, and theories of social networks to elucidate the “first responder” roles of various support actors, the authors contribute to the expatriate literature by opening up the field to a better understanding of the dark side of expatriation that includes crisis definition, prevention, management and solutions.

Should I stay or should I go? A systematic literature review about the conceptualization and measurement of international relocation mobility readiness

Purpose

Employees’ readiness to relocate abroad plays a crucial role for the success or failure of expatriate assignments. Hence, companies should consider employees’ international relocation mobility readiness (IRMR) when selecting candidates for international postings. However, past research has conceptualized and measured IRMR heterogeneously, hampering the interpretation and comparability of IRMR research results. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a new conceptualization of IRMR and to give recommendations for its measurement.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the business, psychological and sociological literature, this paper reviews and categorizes how IRMR has been conceptualized and measured. To structure the findings, a directed content analysis was applied. The sample comprises 88 journal articles.

Findings

The results reveal that studies seldom provide a conceptualization of IRMR. While the authors often find a misfit between the studies’ explicit conceptualization and the actual measurement of IRMR, most scales actually measure willingness (i.e. usually a predictor of risky and spontaneous behavior).

Research limitations/implications

Based on the results and the Rubicon model of action phases (Heckhausen and Gollwitzer, 1987), the authors recommend future research to conceptualize IRMR as a dynamic multidimensional construct, covering the different phases of an individual’s decision to relocate internationally. Future, IRMR measurements should also cover the complexity of IRMR, e.g. regarding specific location characteristics.

Practical implications

Companies should consider the whole decision-making process regarding IRMR to apply specific measures at the best possible time.

Originality/value

This paper investigates IRMR scales according to their scientific validity and hence provides the basic ground for future scale development studies.