Purpose – The current literature implicitly assumes a symmetric impact of cultural distance (CD) on expatriate adjustment. By using distance as a predictor of adjustment, the literature has rendered the direction of the flow irrelevant: a US expatriate in Germany is presumed to face the same...

Purpose – As opposed to the predominant belief in the West, in Chinese dominated societies there may be a positive relationship between age and perceived possession of high quality personal resources. That attitude towards old age may carry over to expatriates in Chinese societies. This may...

Purpose – Most of the fast‐growing literature on business expatriates has focused on organizational expatriates (OEs) who have been assigned by their parent companies to the foreign location. However, there is much less research on self‐initiated expatriates (SIE), who themselves have...

Purpose – As it has been suggested that adult third-culture kids may be more culturally adaptable than others, they have been labelled “the ideal” expatriates. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adjustment of self-initiated expatriate academics in Hong Kong, comparing adult...

Examines to what extent Swedish executives are familiar with the work values of their own host country national subordinates in Singapore. Investigates the work values of host country national middle managers who were employed in Swedish subsidiaries in Singapore as well as their Swedish...

Few studies have delved into career management issues of women on foreign assignments, especially compared to male expatriates. Therefore, a large‐scale mail survey was directed towards Western female and male business expatriates in the same host location. Controlling for the effects of...

Third‐culture kids (TCKs) are adolescents who have lived at least one of their formative years in another country. This study compares survey data collected from British TCKs who were currently living in Hong Kong with those of their adolescent peers living in the UK and Hong Kong. The results...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to compare work values of surviving and non‐surviving managers during a period of general economic recession in Hong Kong associated with the Asian financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach – Involving a natural field experiment, data on work...

Western business expatriates, mostly from the USA, France, the UK and Sweden, responded to a mail survey exploring career issues and their degree of international adjustment. Unexpectedly, it was found that meeting career goals within the corporation does not significantly affect work...