"One Assignment, Two Careers: Exploiting Expatriate Talent with a Dual- Career Competency Framework"

Effective global staffing practices are designed to exploit the presence of talent. Nonetheless, talent can be problematic to secure, and manage, when it is camouflaged in a dual-career expatriate context. While research has pointed out the gap in identifying appropriate selection processes for dual-career expatriate couples (DCECs), efforts to create a holistic view of dual-career management have remained limited. This conceptual paper argues that acquiring a dual-career competency may lead to a competitive advantage within global organizations. We systematically review the literature on dual- career expatriation to identify a set of related behaviours demonstrated by DCECs that impact on successful international assignment performance, noting key features of dual-career expatriation that can inform the selection process.

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