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This paper aims to explore the interplay between burnout, national identity and career satisfaction among diplomats. In particular, the authors focus on the roles of home and host country identification as an emotional resource for overcoming the negative effects of job-related burnout.

Survey responses from 123 diplomats were used to assess the moderating role of home and host country identification on the relationship between burnout and career satisfaction.

Various combinations of high or low home or host country identification were tested, and the findings suggest that the negative effect of burnout on career satisfaction is reduced for those individuals that have high identification with both the home and the host country, while this is not the case for other combinations. This points to the beneficial effects of dual national identifications even for diplomats – a group that would normally be expected to identify strongly with the home country alone.

No existing study that the authors know of has explored the relationship between burnout, national identity and career satisfaction among diplomats or other types of expatriates. This is unfortunate because a better understanding of national identity could guide practitioners in finding ways to reduce the negative consequences of burnout in international organizations.

In response to the somewhat paradoxical combination of increasing diversity in the global workforce and the resurgence of nationalism in an era of global mobility, the purpose of this paper is to uncover how employees on international assignments respond to exposure to new cultures. Specifically, the paper aims to explicate the underlying psychological mechanisms linking expatriates’ monocultural, multicultural, global and cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategies with their responses toward the host culture by drawing upon exclusionary and integrative reactions theory in cross-cultural psychology.

This conceptual paper draws on the perspective of exclusionary vs integrative reactions toward foreign cultures – a perspective rooted in cross-cultural psychology research – to categorize expatriates’ responses toward the host culture. More specifically, the study elaborates how two primary activators of expatriates’ responses toward the host culture – the salience of home-culture identity and a cultural learning mindset – explain the relationship between cultural identity negotiation strategies and expatriates’ exclusionary and integrative responses, providing specific propositions on how each type of cultural identity negotiation strategy is expected to be associated with expatriates’ exclusionary and integrative responses toward the host culture.

The present study proposes that expatriates’ adoption of a monocultural identity negotiation strategy is positively associated with exclusionary responses toward the host culture and it is negatively associated with integrative responses toward the host culture; expatriates’ adoption of a multicultural identity negotiation strategy is positively associated with both exclusionary responses and integrative responses toward the host culture; expatriates’ adoption of a global identity negotiation strategy is negatively associated with exclusionary responses toward the host culture; and expatriates’ adoption of a cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategy is negatively associated with exclusionary responses, and positively associated with integrative responses toward the host culture. The following metaphors for these different types of cultural identity negotiation strategies are introduced: “ostrich” (monocultural strategy), “frog” (multicultural strategy), “bird” (global strategy) and “lizard” (cosmopolitan strategy).

The proposed dynamic framework of cultural identity negotiation strategies illustrates the sophisticated nature of expatriates’ responses to new cultures. This paper also emphasizes that cross-cultural training tempering expatriates’ exclusionary reactions and encouraging integrative reactions is crucial for more effective expatriation in a multicultural work environment.

Although qualitative methods have now gained a stronger foothold in International Business (IB) research, they remain under-researched, especially regarding how researchers can overcome obstacles created when interviewers exhibit ‘multiculturality’ during international field research projects. This paper analyses how researchers’ multicultural backgrounds create challenges and opportunities in data collection during in-depth interviewing, and how such backgrounds further impact on the power imbalance between researchers and interviewees.

The two multicultural co-authors of this paper draw upon their 141 in-depth interview experiences with expatriates and local staff across five separate field research projects in Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea, Finland, and the US. Field research experiences are analysed through a Bourdieusian inspired ‘epistemic reflexive’ self-interrogation process between the two co-authors.

This paper suggests five strategies to cope with the power imbalance between the researcher and the respondent in terms of social categorisation and language: activating the ‘favoured’ ethnicity, putting the ‘desired’ passport forward, constantly reassuring of belonging to the ‘right’ social category, bonding in the interviewee’s mother tongue and adopting a multilingual approach characterised by frequent code-switching.

This paper emphasises the relevance of exploratory, self-reflexive analysis, and uncovers how social categorisation and language influence the interviewer-interviewee power imbalance. Distinct methodological contributions are proposed accordingly for IB literature: placing ‘multiculturality’ as an important concept at the forefront of qualitative IB research; and identifying ethnicity and accent as key factors in terms of securing and conducting interviews.

In response to the somewhat paradoxical combination of increasing diversity in the global workforce and the resurgence of nationalism in an era of global mobility, this chapter aims to uncover how employees on international assignments respond to exposure to new cultures. Specifically, the study aims to explicate the underlying psychological mechanisms linking expatriates' monocultural, multicultural, global, and cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategies with their responses toward the host culture by drawing upon exclusionary and integrative reactions theory in cross-cultural psychology. This conceptual chapter draws on the perspective of exclusionary versus integrative reactions toward foreign cultures – a perspective rooted in cross-cultural psychology research – to categorize expatriates' responses toward the host culture. More specifically, the study elaborates how two primary activators of expatriates' responses toward the host culture – the salience of home-culture identity and a cultural learning mindset – explain the relationship between cultural identity negotiation strategies and expatriates' exclusionary and integrative responses. The following metaphors for these different types of cultural identity negotiation strategies are introduced: “ostrich” (monocultural strategy), “frog” (multicultural strategy), “bird” (global strategy), and “lizard” (cosmopolitan strategy). The proposed dynamic framework of cultural identity negotiation strategies illustrates the sophisticated nature of expatriates' responses to new cultures. This chapter also emphasizes that cross-cultural training tempering expatriates' exclusionary reactions and encouraging integrative reactions is crucial for more effective expatriation in a multicultural work environment.

In this chapter, we focus on expatriate CEOs who are assigned by the parent company to work in a subsidiary and compare them to those who themselves have initiated to work abroad as CEOs. Since we do not know much about these individuals, we direct our attention to: (1) who they are (demographics), (2) what they are like (personality), and (3) how they perform (job performance).

Data was sought from 93 assigned expatriate CEOs and 94 self-initiated expatriate CEOs in China.

Our findings demonstrate that in terms of demography, self-initiated CEOs were more experienced than assigned CEOs. With regard to personality, we found difference in self-control and dispositional anger: Assigned expatriate CEOs had more self-control and less angry temperament than their self-initiated counterparts. Finally, we found assigned expatriate CEOs to rate their job performance higher than self-initiated CEOs.

Although there may not always be immediate benefits, career consideration often plays a role when individuals choose whether to become an expatriate. For many years, organizations have used expatriation to develop talented managers for high-level positions in the home country. Recently, however, a new trend has emerged. Talented top managers are no longer expatriated only from within parent companies to subsidiaries. Self-initiated expatriates with no prior affiliation in the parent company are increasingly used to fill top management positions in subsidiaries.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Performance of multinational corporations (MNCs) on the global stage can become more effective when expatriate employees adapt positively within different cultural surroundings. How they choose to respond helps ascertain the type of cultural identity strategy potentially most suitable for the host culture in question.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.