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Talent Management of Self-Initiated Expatriates pp 30–58Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Are Self-Initiated Expatriates Born or Made? Exploring the Relationship between SIE Orientation and Individual ROI

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Abstract

Extant literature has argued that employee turnover is almost always an undesirable outcome (e.g., Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2005), and in the expatriate context even more challenging due to the high costs associated with utilizing international assignees (Haslberger & Vaiman, 2010). Clearly, the loss of company-assigned (CA) expatriates during an international assignment is not an outcome multinational corporations (MNCs) expect, given the strategic importance of global staffing toward achieving longer-term succession and management development initiatives (Haslberger & Brewster, 2009). Yet, in a recent study of individual return on investment (ROI), it was found that CA expatriates’ intent to leave during an assignment is not only relatively high but also growing, in light of the significant challenges, as well as opportunities, presented to them as a result of the “global war for talent” (McNulty, De Cieri, & Hutchings, 2013). In this chapter, I draw on a study of 71 long-term expatriates to closely examine the phenomenon of CA expatriates being pushed toward a self-initiated expatriate (SIE) orientation while employed by an MNC.

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Authors
  1. Yvonne McNulty
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Reykjavik University, Iceland

    Vlad Vaiman

  2. Webster University Vienna, Austria

    Arno Haslberger

Copyright information

© 2013 Yvonne McNulty

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McNulty, Y. (2013). Are Self-Initiated Expatriates Born or Made? Exploring the Relationship between SIE Orientation and Individual ROI. In: Vaiman, V., Haslberger, A. (eds) Talent Management of Self-Initiated Expatriates. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392809_3

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