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Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

Volume 3, 2016

Themes in Expatriate and Repatriate Research over Four Decades: What Do We Know and What Do We Still Need to Learn?

Abstract

Since the 1970s, international work assignments have been, and continue to be, a growing trend in multinational corporations. Organizations most commonly do this through an expatriate assignment where the employee expatriates to a foreign country to live and work for at least one year in order to complete a specific assignment, and then typically repatriates back to the home country. Scholars of organizational psychology and behavior have thus investigated various aspects of expatriation and repatriation over the past 40 years. We review the 100 most influential articles published in this area during these decades. We identify important themes, discuss how and why the themes have evolved, and make note of unanswered research questions. On the basis of what we have learned, we make suggestions with regard to how individuals and organizations can better manage expatriate assignments. We close by providing future research directions on expatriation and repatriation.

Keyword(s): expatriates, global work experiences, international assignments
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2016-03-21
2025-04-21
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062437
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Themes in Expatriate and Repatriate Research over Four Decades: What Do We Know and What Do We Still Need to Learn?
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 3, 83 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062437
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062437
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062437
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