Evolving research on expatriates: what is ‘known’ after four decades (1970–2012)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to provide a comprehensive review of the evolving research on a still key challenge for human resource management (HRM) in the globalized business of today: the expatriates and their impact on business performance. Research of four decades was reviewed to show what was known and what was not yet known. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to build a conceptual map of the evolving research. Up to 438 papers published in 104 different journals by 233 authors were analyzed. Most of the literature studies and research does not show a systematic approach, so this review may be useful for scholars and practitioners in the field of HRM and International Business Management in order to advance into the next stage of development on how to deal with and take advantage of hiring expatriates. Even after more than four decades of intensive research, the literature on expatriation is still nascent and requires higher order content. New contexts and organizations should be included in the research agenda, while an effort must be made in systematic approaches and in building higher order content in the international HRM field.

Keywords::

• content analysis
• expatriates
• human resource development
• human resource management
• international business management
• literature review

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the action editor Professor Michel Dickmann for their suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

^1. We thank the first reviewer for suggesting the inclusion of this historical perspective in order to clarify the right place of the expatriation topic in Social Sciences.

^2.s_i =  share of the journal (represented by the percentage of share on the total as a number). In our case, s_i is taken as the percentage – therefore, the top-bound is 10,000.

^3. In this paper, the FFI index is calculated by taking s_i as a singular number.

^4. Black and Gregersen, both authors have published some joint articles and hence citations may be referred to such papers (i.e. counted in duplicate). The same may be applied to Turnley and Feldman who have co-authored at least one paper.

^5. In this case, it is the same paper co-authored by both authors, Rosenzweig and Nohria.