Guest editorial: ONLY REPLICATIONS

Citation

Selmer, J., Shaffer, M., Guttormsen, D.S.A., Stoermer, S., Pinto, L.H., Chen, Y.-P. and Lauring, J. (2023), "Guest editorial: ONLY REPLICATIONS", Journal of Global Mobility, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 297-299. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-09-2023-102

Little did we know that we would have to eat our words regarding replications. Despite recent compelling arguments presented for the necessity to undertake replication studies in our own area of international business and management (Dau et al., 2021; Köhler and Cortina, 2021; Tipu and Ryan, 2022) and the launch of Journal of Management Scientific Reports (JOMSR), a journal exclusively dedicated to publishing replication studies in management, the inertia seems to persist. Our valiant attempt to contribute to the First Decade Celebrations of the Journal of Global Mobility (JGM), by publishing this Special Issue (SI) entitled: “ONLY REPLICATIONS”, almost did not materialize.

We learned that what we wrote in our Call for Papers was indeed all true. Due to the existing bias of editors, authors are used to building “card houses” by stacking single studies on top of each other. Researchers themselves may be more motivated to make a unique contribution rather than to repeat the work of others. Building an academic career that includes publications of replication studies may not be attractive. Hence, the bias towards novel, path-breaking, positive results in our research market still seems as strong as ever (Dau et al., 2021; Köhler and Cortina, 2021; van Witteloostuijn, 2016). In our case, such prejudice among scholars translated into a low number of submissions received, almost capsizing our SI before it had started. Having narrowly escaped such a fate, we had to face the next extraordinary challenge. Due to the current preference for unique research contributions, still prompting some academic journals to be unsupportive or overtly dismissive of replication studies, thereby discouraging scholars from conducting them (Easley et al., 2013; Martin and Clarke, 2017; Tipu and Ryan, 2022), reviewers are not comfortable dealing with such manuscripts. This resulted in considerable efforts on our part to encourage reviewers to accept our invitations to review submitted manuscripts dealing with replications. We also found that some reviewers struggled to review replications because they either misunderstood or were confused about the objectives of the study.

After considerable efforts and time invested in overcoming these challenges, we are extremely pleased to present the six articles making up the JGM SI: “ONLY REPLICATIONS”. Since all the Associate Editors of JGM handled one of the manuscripts during the R&R process, they will introduce their “own” article.

Margaret Shaffer (The evolving field of global mobility: responses to global volatility (2013–2022)): In this paper, the authors conducted a constructive replication of Dabić et al.’s (2015) review of the expatriate literature. Through both bibliometric and narrative analyses of the expatriate literature published during the period of 2013–2022, they note the explosion of research that has taken place during the past decade. In contrast with Dabić’s findings that most of the literature focused on human resource management and was mostly based on a US perspective, more recent literature has adopted a more strategic focus and has begun to move away from a US-dominant viewpoint. This review culminates in several recommendations for future research and advocates for more interdisciplinary research that takes into consideration different levels of analysis.

David S. A. Guttormsen (Being an “outsider in”: skilled migrants’ career strategies in local organizations): The authors conduct an empirical replication of a study published in Journal of Organizational Behavior by Jelena Zikic, Jaime Bonache and Jean-Luc Cerdin (2010) regarding career challenges and coping strategies among skilled migrants. Both studies are positioned within the qualitative research paradigm and deployed interviews as the chief data collection method of talented and highly skilled migrants. Whereas the 2010 article focused on the talent pool outside of organizations in Canada, France and Spain – the current article revisits the same topics and challenges but taking departure with those who have secured employment (Luxemburg). The 2023 article adds to extant literature by identifying two major challenges as well as strategies for managing their careers. This discovery enables the authors to produce knowledge that also extends the 2010 study in terms of proposing a new categorization of skilled migrants pertaining to a post-organizational entry phase, which remains understudied.

Sebastian Stoermer (Self-initiated expatriates motivation and basic psychological needs – a generalization and extension replication): This article was written by Aziz Madi, Abdelrahim Alsoussi and Omar Shubailat and aims to generalize and extend the findings of the seminal work by Oberholster et al. (2013) on the motivation to expatriate among humanitarian and religious workers. Madi et al. do so by using a different, more diverse sample of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs), who are primarily from developing countries, and a sophisticated analytical approach, i.e. latent class analysis. Importantly, in their study a novel motivational cluster labeled “Adventurous Professionals” emerged, while general support for the original four clusters identified by Oberholster et al. (2013) was found. In addition, Madi et al. set SIE motivation in relation to basic psychological needs as per self-determination theory and use this to further empirically engage with propositions advanced in the original study by Oberholster et al. (2013). In light of this, this study underlines the value of replication studies and provides vital implications for the research debate on motivations to expatriate.

Luisa Helena Pinto (Expatriate management in Japanese firms: Paradox of the HR system for Thai self-initiated expatriates): Our current knowledge of the higher turnover rate of expatriates needs further empirical scrutiny, bearing in mind the specificities of the destination context and the characteristics of the expatriates. The study from Chie Yorozu addresses this research gap. It examines a new target group of Thai self-initiated expatriates living and working in Japan, known as a work context unfavorable to foreign labor. The findings replicate earlier results. Japanese work culture and HR systems require long-work hours and high long-term commitment, which do not fit the expectations of Thai self-initiated expatriates and explain their low satisfaction and high turnover intention. Their perceptions were also influenced by poor relationships with local colleagues, including local harassment and bullying, which are topics requiring further investigation in global mobility studies.

Yu-Ping Chen (#MeToo, Covid-19 and the new workplace: re-examining institutional discrimination’s impact on workplace harassment of expatriates following two exogenous shocks): Obenauer surveyed 391 expatriates working in 79 countries to replicate Bader et al.’s (2018) study which indicated that limiting expatriate assignment opportunities for female employees was a reinforcement of the gender discrimination and that organizations should adopt education plans designed to reduce harassment experienced by females in expatriate assignments. Drawing upon the same theory used by Bader et al. but using a larger and more diverse sample, this study generally replicated the findings from Bader et al. (2018). While Obenauer’s study did not replicate the effects pertaining to the relationship between macro-level variables and the experiences of harassment, this contributes to the field of replication study because it opens a future research avenue for researchers to consider.

Jakob Lauring (Traders across borders: who and where?): Revisiting Boyacigiller (1990) and the role of expatriates in the management of interdependence complexity and risk in multinational corporations, the authors, Agnieszka Nowińska, Jean-François Hennart and Svetla Marinova use the case of a Danish bunker oil trader firm to examine the generalizability of past findings. They found that Danish expatriates were transferred to handle global customers in its large foreign subsidiaries in high-income countries. These results generally confirm findings of Boyacigiller (1990) with one exception. None of the internal transfers involved expatriates assigned to culturally or institutionally distant subsidiaries unless it was to serve global customers. These findings challenge the idea that a principal purpose for using expatriates is to alleviate local skills shortages or to handle political risks. Consequently, while previous findings were largely corroborated, the authors also extended the original study by demonstrating that expatriates can be assigned not only to distant countries but also to close ones.

This is a disparate collection of replication studies within our research area, as could have been expected since there was no specification in the title of this JGM SI. We do hope, that, at least in a small measure, we have contributed to relive the dearth of replication studies regarding global mobility research and would be very pleased if more authors would be inspired to submit replication studies to regular issues of JGM – as we continue our dedicated call for “doing it again” – and publishing replication studies (Selmer, 2016). It is our conviction that replication studies ensure that our knowledge is not derived from a large number of single studies, and failure to conduct such studies will eventually lead to a replication crisis (Loken and Gelman, 2017; Schooler, 2014; Walker et al., 2019).