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The purpose of the present study is to explore the effects of early life international exposure on the career capital (CC) of adult third culture kids (ATCKs).

The study adopts a qualitative research design based on 34 semi-structured interviews with ATCKs who have had international exposure in their childhood as members of an expatriate family.

The results show that a globally mobile childhood has extensive long-term impacts on ATCKs' CC in the areas of knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom. Additionally, their early international experience also had several negative impacts across these aspects of CC.

This paper provides a novel understanding of the long-term impacts of early life international exposure on ATCKs' CC, and this paper is the first study to use the CC framework among an ATCK population.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the effects of expatriation on the development of career capital among the partners of expatriates.

The study draws on in-depth interviews with 30 Finnish partners of expatriates.

The results reflect the various learning experiences reported by partners of expatriates that developed their career capital during expatriation. The learning experiences related to the experience of living abroad itself and to the specific activities undertaken when abroad. The extent to which partners developed knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom career capital was found to partly reflect their situation abroad as stay-at-home partners or as employees in less-demanding or more-demanding jobs. Though the experiences were developmental for all partners as have been reported among expatriates, the authors also identified several aspects in which partners' experiences differed from the typical developmental experiences of expatriates.

The results also highlight the influence of initiative, an active role and career self-management skills in partners' career capital development.

This paper advances the understanding of how expatriation affects expatriate partners' career capital, a topic that has not previously been studied in-depth.

This paper investigates whether career capital (CC) development abroad, expatriate type, career type and career stage affect expatriates' career success in terms of perceived marketability and the number of promotions.

The study presents findings from a 2020 follow-up study among 327 expatriates, including assigned expatriates (AEs) (n = 117) and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) (n = 220), who worked abroad in 2015 and 2016. Among that group, 186 had continued their international career, while 141 had repatriated. Structural equation modeling with robust maximum likelihood estimation was used to test this study's hypotheses. MPlus 8.6 software supported the analysis.

The study outlines that CC developed abroad positively impacts perceived marketability and the number of promotions. Second, repatriates reported a greater degree of perceived marketability than those continuing an international career. Career type did not predict the number of promotions. The expatriate type did not influence any of the career success measures. Finally, expatriates in their late-career stage did not achieve a similar level of career success as those in other career stages.

All the expatriates were university-educated Finnish engineers and business professionals, and the career benefits of expatriation could differ for different sample groups. The study calls for more context-sensitive global careers research. The findings have positive implications for self-guided career actors considering working abroad. Organizations could focus more of their global talent attraction, management and career efforts on SIEs.

To analyze the impacts of these four antecedents on the career success of expatriates, the authors cooperated with two Finnish labor unions in 2020 to explore the careers of 327 expatriates, having surveyed the same group in 2015/2016. Such follow-up studies are not very common in expatriation research since it is difficult to keep track of expatriates who change locations and employers.

This paper aims: to undertake a systematic literature review on SIEs, examining twenty years of literature published between 2000 and 2020, focusing on the most-cited empirical work in the field; to analyse the topics covered by these studies; and to propose a research agenda.

We conducted a systematic literature review, identifying the 20 most-cited empirical articles through citation analysis during the period and, because citations accrue over time, the six most-cited empirical articles of the last three years. We then used content analysis to examine the main themes they address and identify the research gaps.

The most common themes addressed in the SIE literature are: analysis of the types and distinctions of SIEs, motivation to undertake self-initiated expatriation, SIEs' adjustment to the new country, and SIEs' careers and outcomes.

This paper provides a first opportunity to look back at 20 years of research into a relatively new topic, highlighting the main research themes and knowledge gaps, and setting directions for future research. The paper expands knowledge on SIEs, assisting SIE scholars and IHRM practitioners to develop a global, critical understanding of SIEs' issues, and hopefully energising future research in this field.

This study explores whether expatriation type (assigned expatriates (AEs) versus self-initiated expatriates (SIEs)) is linked to job exhaustion via possible differences in required efforts for their jobs and the rewards they gain from them, and/or the balance between efforts and rewards. Adopting effort–reward imbalance (ERI) and job demands/resources (JD-R) theories, the authors study the possible role of ERI as a mediator between expatriation type and job exhaustion.

An online survey was carried out in co-operation with two Finnish trade unions, providing representative data from 484 assigned and SIEs. The authors test this study’s hypotheses through latent structural equation modelling, and the analysis was conducted with Stata 17.0 software.

The results show that ERI between them are correlated with the job exhaustion of expatriates in general and there are no direct links between expatriation type and job exhaustion. The required effort from AEs was higher than that from SIEs though no difference was found for rewards, and the match between effort demands and rewards is less favourable for AEs than SIEs. AEs experienced higher job exhaustion than SIEs because of the higher effort demands and greater imbalance between efforts and rewards.

The study examines the work well-being of two types of expatriates and explores the underlying mechanisms that may explain why they may differ from each other.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on satisfaction with an expatriate job and how such satisfaction is linked to leadership. Specifically, this research examines how two different kinds of distances – physical distance and functional distance – between an expatriate and his/her supervisor are related to satisfaction with the expatriate job.

The study was conducted among 290 Finnish expatriates. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis was conducted in order to test the research hypothesis.

The results show that low functional distance with a supervisor is related to greater satisfaction with the expatriate job. The physical distance is not directly connected to expatriate job satisfaction, but the common effect of the two types of distance shows that among those whose functional distance is low, working in the same country with the leader is linked to greater expatriate satisfaction than recorded among those who were physically distant. Interestingly, expatriates with high functional distance are more satisfied with the expatriate job if they work in a different country to their supervisor.

This study makes a contribution in three areas; first, it addresses the understudied phenomena of international work-specific job satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with an expatriate job. Second, it provides new knowledge on the outcomes of leader distance in the context of expatriation, a work situation that is inherently related to changes in physical location and to organizational relationships. Third, it contributes to leadership literature and highlights the importance of the conditions and the context in which leadership occurs.

This paper extends the increasing debates about the role of international experience through mechanisms other than standard expatriation packages, in particular through the use of short-term assignments. It explores the different forms of short-term assignments (project work, commuter assignments, virtual international working and development assignments) and the different sets of positive and negative implications these can have for the company and the individuals concerned. The integration-differentiation debate is reflected here as elsewhere in IHRM, with the company moving towards greater centralization and control of its use of these assignments.

Since the research is exploratory, we adopted a qualitative approach to get a more in-depth understanding on the realities the corporations and the assignees are facing. The study was implemented through a single case study setting in which the data were collected by interviewing (n=20) line managers, human resource management (HRM) staff and assignees themselves. In addition corporate documentation and other materials were reviewed.

The present case study provides evidence about the characteristics of short-term assignments as well as the on the management of such assignments. The paper identifies various benefits and challenges involved in the use of short-term assignments both from the perspectives of the company and assignees. Furthermore, the findings support the view that a recent increase in the popularity of short-term assignments has not been matched by the development of HRM policies for such assignments.

As a single case study, limitations in the generalizability of the findings should be kept in mind. More large-scale research evidence is needed around different forms of international assignments beyond standard expatriation in order to fully capture the realities faced by international HRM specialists

The paper identifies many challenges but also benefits of using short-term assignments. The paper reports in-depth findings on HR development needs that organizations face when expanding the use of such assignments.

The paper identifies many challenges but also benefits of using short-term assignments. The paper reports in-depth findings on HR development needs that organizations face when expanding the use of such assignments.

Empirical research on short-term assignments is still very limited. In that way the paper provides much needed in-depth evidence on why such assignments are used, what challenges are involved in the use of such assignments and what kinds of HR-development needs are involved.

This paper introduces this special issue.

The paper examines some of the key themes in global human resource management.

By reviewing, briefly, the existing literature in these areas, the paper outlines a limited but crucial research agenda and sets the papers in this special issue in context.

This paper presents some new empirically‐based work on human resource development.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how dual career expatriates view their spouses' roles during international assignments.

In total, 39 interviews were carried out with expatriates who had a working spouse. The interview data were content analysed using replication logic.

The authors' findings indicate that the importance of spousal support increases among dual career couples during international assignments. Expatriates report their spouses as having supporting, flexible, determining, instrumental, restricting and equal partner spousal roles.

This study provides in‐depth understanding about multiple spousal roles during international assignments among dual career couples and contributes to the previous literature by showing how spousal roles appear in the international context, and by identifying two new spousal roles.