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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.

Purpose: The death of a child can elicit enduring and intense parental grief. Additionally, as parents are both confronted with the loss of their child, interpersonal processes come into play. This study aimed to examine the change in reported levels of grief among bereaved parents individually and at a couple-level. The authors examined the differences in grief trajectories between mothers and fathers and whether the reported level of grief of one partner predicts the other partner’s reported level of grief.

Design/methodology/approach: Our longitudinal study included 229 bereaved couples who completed the Inventory of Complicated Grief at 6, 13, and 20 months post-loss.

Findings: A latent growth curve analysis showed that parents reported consistently high average grief levels, mothers reported higher grief levels than fathers, and all parents reported a similar small decline in grief. A cross-lagged panel analysis showed that the grief of one parent affected the grief of the other parent with similar strength. Our results held regardless of the child’s gender and age, but an expected loss was associated with a lower grief level 6 months post-loss and a smaller decline in reported levels of grief.

Originality/value: These findings highlight bereaved parents as a particularly vulnerable population, increase our understanding of change in parental grief over time and of the interdependence of grieving in bereaved couples.

A three‐axes synchronous torque motor with permanent magnet excitation and solid stator and rotor yoke is used to adjust an air borne telescope and to eliminate oscillations. Hence the motor is part of a complex mechanical system and has to be included in the structural analysis. For this reason the attempt is made to simulate the nonlinear behavior of the motor by a dynamic model considering the eddy current fields and the magnetization characteristic of the iron.

The purpose of this paper is to model the impact of structural factors and activities on commitment in a regional strategic network (RSN) context.

A longitudinal case study examines two regional strategic networks acting in different business areas in mid Sweden.

Competition‐neutral, social, and personal goals were found to be powerful drivers promoting shared values and commitment among competitors, whereas business‐related goals worked well for complementary firms, providing a more stable basis for network commitment. In the RSN with a large number of members, sensitivity to absence was low, but it took longer for members to get to know one another, slowing commitment development. The RSN including members with complementary resources proved a more favorable setting than did the RSN including competitors, and frequent activities that favored social relationship development increased commitment.

This study identifies important factors influencing the development of commitment in network contexts, but is limited to two cases. The topic merits further research: other factors need consideration, and the factors discussed here should be evaluated in other contexts.

The impact on network commitment of the factors discussed here needs to be considered by RSN initiators and hubs.

Few studies treat commitment in RSN contexts. This paper addresses this deficit by identifying structural factors and activities that influence commitment development.

The purpose of the study is to identify and develop a framework to clarify facilitating orchestrator hub-team roles; their interactions, linked capabilities and activities; and the hub-team concept. This framework is illustrated by a case study of an orchestrator hub-team facilitating cross-country and network co-creation in Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland.

The following two approaches are used: a conceptual approach that combines various source materials and concepts related to the “bricolage approach”; and an empirical approach that illustrates the conceptual framework using a longitudinal, qualitative, single-case study and the action research method.

By combining research related to three differing yet somewhat overlapping research perspectives, three facilitating orchestrator hub-team roles are identified, linked to orchestrator capabilities and activities relevant to innovative value creation in extensive networks including both private and public actors highlighting the role of people in networks. An orchestrator hub-team framework and five related activity categories are developed and introduced.

This study contributes to research on the orchestration of innovative co-creation in extensive networks and network management by clarifying the facilitating orchestrator hub-team roles and their related capabilities and activities, and thereby describing the role of a centrally positioned hub-team.

The hub-team framework may bring structure and understanding to hub-teams, thus easing and enabling orchestration and value co-creation.

This study offers a further developed, integrated framework for intermediating the facilitating roles of a hub-team orchestrating extensive network and public/private co-creation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the motives of female childless self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) in deciding to work abroad, so far under-researched.

The study departs from prior research in using a new methodological approach, i.e. the analysis of online diaries (blogs) to explore the motives of a specific population to relocate.

The emergent model of motivations is based upon four main dimensions that emerged from the socially constructed experience of these single childless female SIEs: escape as main motivation, confrontation to reality, identity reconstruction and purpose of expatriation.

The findings reveal new elements of motivations to move abroad such as the complete absence of the notion of career from the blog posts, replaced, however, by a feminist and existentialist reflection.

The purpose of this literature review is to critically analyze, synthesize and integrate the currently fragmented literature concerning the factors affecting the international transfer of individual career capital (CC).

This paper is a systematic literature review of the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC from/for expatriates, repatriates and other employed highly skilled migrants and return migrants. The findings are classified based on the Social Chronology Framework (SCF) proposed by Gunz and Mayrhofer (2015).

This systematic literature review suggests that the international transfer of individual CC, which can be expressed both as (1) individual-level transfer across different organizations located in different countries as the direct use and application of CC and (2) individual knowing-how transfer to other individuals within organization, is affected by the individual, organizational and broader contextual-level factors that are bound by the aspect of time. The authors summarize the findings by presenting a model of the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC.

The authors align the CC framework (Defillippi and Arthur, 1994) to the SCF (Gunz and Mayrhofer, 2018) by explaining the factors affecting the international transfer of individual CC that go beyond the qualities of CC, including the Being, Space and Time domains. Moreover, the authors critique the current focus on the international CC transfer in the present suggesting that future research should explore this phenomenon as a more dynamic process. Finally, the authors contribute to the literature on the global mobility of highly skilled employees' by highlighting gaps in the knowledge of the international transfer of CC and presenting a future research agenda.

Employees’ readiness to relocate abroad plays a crucial role for the success or failure of expatriate assignments. Hence, companies should consider employees’ international relocation mobility readiness (IRMR) when selecting candidates for international postings. However, past research has conceptualized and measured IRMR heterogeneously, hampering the interpretation and comparability of IRMR research results. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a new conceptualization of IRMR and to give recommendations for its measurement.

Based on the business, psychological and sociological literature, this paper reviews and categorizes how IRMR has been conceptualized and measured. To structure the findings, a directed content analysis was applied. The sample comprises 88 journal articles.

The results reveal that studies seldom provide a conceptualization of IRMR. While the authors often find a misfit between the studies’ explicit conceptualization and the actual measurement of IRMR, most scales actually measure willingness (i.e. usually a predictor of risky and spontaneous behavior).

Based on the results and the Rubicon model of action phases (Heckhausen and Gollwitzer, 1987), the authors recommend future research to conceptualize IRMR as a dynamic multidimensional construct, covering the different phases of an individual’s decision to relocate internationally. Future, IRMR measurements should also cover the complexity of IRMR, e.g. regarding specific location characteristics.

Companies should consider the whole decision-making process regarding IRMR to apply specific measures at the best possible time.

This paper investigates IRMR scales according to their scientific validity and hence provides the basic ground for future scale development studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the spatial patterns of different phenomena in the same geographical space. Andresen’s spatial point pattern test computes a global index (the S-index) that informs on the similarity or dissimilarity of spatial patterns. This paper suggests a generalized S-index that allows perfect similarity and dissimilarity in all situations.

The relevance of the generalized S-index is illustrated with police data from the San Francisco Police Department. In all cases, the original S-index, its robust version – which excludes zero-crime areas – and the generalized alternative were computed.

In the first example, the number of crimes greatly exceeds the number of areas and there are no zero-value areas. A key feature of the second example is that most street segments were free of any criminal activity in both patterns. Finally, in the third case, one type of event is considerably rarer than the other. The original S-index is equal to the generalized index (Case 1) or theoretically irrelevant (Cases 2 and 3). Furthermore, the robust index is unnecessary and potentially biased when the number of at least one phenomenon being compared is lower than the number of areas under study. Thus, this study suggests to replace the S-index with its generalized version.

The generalized S-index is relevant for situations when events are relatively rare –as is the case with crime – and the unit of analysis is small but plentiful – such as addresses or street segments.

The purpose of this paper is to examine scholars’ proposal that self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) can provide an alternative to company-assigned expatriates (CAEs) for filling key positions in foreign subsidiaries at a lower cost.

Underpinned by findings from empirical studies, this conceptual paper compares SIEs with CAEs and their traditional alternative, multinational corporation (MNC) local employees, to examine the suitability of SIEs as a replacement for CAEs.

SIEs are likely not a suitable alternative to CAEs for purposes of control, transfer, running the foreign operation and management development (purposes requiring firm-specific competencies), but are likely suitable for filling technical and lower and middle management positions (requiring more generic, specialist competencies) and purposes of managing within the subsidiary and responding to the local environment (purposes requiring cross-cultural and host location-specific competencies).

Guidance is provided for the recruitment of SIEs as an alternative to CAEs.

The paper adds new insight in assessing whether SIEs provide an alternative to CAEs by proposing a framework that integrates: the identification of SIEs’ competencies relative to those of CAEs and MNC local employees, based on career capital theory; with the assessment of their value, based on human capital allocation theory, against the purposes for which CAEs are deployed.