Leaving and experiencing: why academics expatriate and how they experience expatriation

Globalisation has led to increasing international mobility amongst business and education professionals. Whilst expatriate management literature focuses on expatriate assignment of corporate executives, expatriate academics remain an under researched group. Higher education literature has focused on internationalisation of education systems, notably the growth in international strategic alliances between universities, and mobility amongst students. Therefore compared with what is known about the student body, very little is known about the experiences of internationally mobile academics. Drawing on a qualitative study of academics, this paper evaluates the use of metaphor for understanding the “motivation to go” overseas and the “experience” of expatriation. It evaluates four metaphors which have emerged from the study for expatriating and four others for the experience of expatriation. Finally it suggests that the voluntary, self‐selecting expatriate should be much more extensively researched.

[1]  J. Bonache,et al.  Expatriate compesation and its link to subsidiary strategic role : a theoretical analysis , 1997 .

[2]  Philip G. Altbach.  The International Academic Profession: Portraits of Fourteen Countries. Special Report. , 1996 .

[3]  Tuomo Peltonen,et al.  Narrative construction of expatriate experience and career cycle: discursive patterns in Finnish stories of international , 1998 .

[4]  Carl A. Rodrigues.  Developing expatriates’ cross‐cultural sensitivity: cultures where “your culture’s OK” is really not OK , 1997 .

[5]  C. Hughes,et al.  Writing on academic careers , 1998 .

[6]  R. Cuthbert.  Working in Higher Education. , 1996 .

[7]  G. Morgan.  More on Metaphor: Why We Cannot Control Tropes in Administrative Science. , 1983 .

[8]  J. Stewart Black,et al.  Globalizing people through international assignments , 1999 .

[9]  F. Perna,et al.  Mentoring and Career Development among University Faculty , 1995 .

[10]  James A. Holstein,et al.  The new language of qualitative method , 1997 .

[11]  N. Forster.  'The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates': a reappraisal , 1997 .

[12]  J. H. Schuster,et al.  Emigration, internationalization, and “brain drain”: Propensities among British Academics , 1994 .

[13]  Gary S. Insch,et al.  Why Are Early Departure Rates from Foreign Assignments Lower Than Historically Reported , 1998 .

[14]  J. Osland.  The hero's adventure : the overseas experience of expatriate business people , 1990 .

[15]  G. Morgan.  Paradigms, Metaphors, and Puzzle Solving in Organizational Theory. , 1980 .

[16]  Willy McCourt,et al.  Discussion Note: Using Metaphors to Understand and to Change Organizations: A Critique of Gareth Morgan's Approach , 1997 .

[17]  Jr. John R. Schermerhorn.  Learning by Going? , 1999 .

[18]  Hal B. Gregersen,et al.  Closing the gap: Expectations versus reality among repatriates , 1998 .

[19]  C. Pinder,et al.  Controlling Tropes in Administrative Science. , 1982 .

[20]  Zeynep Aycan,et al.  Expatriate adjustment as a multifaceted phenomenon: individual and organizational level predictors , 1997 .

[21]  P. Scott.  Wider or deeper? International dimensions of mass higher education , 1994 .

[22]  Rosalie L. Tung.  American expatriates abroad: From neophytes to cosmopolitans , 1998 .

[23]  J. Alexander,et al.  Images of Organization , 1988 .

[24]  J. Selmer.  Corporate expatriate career development , 1999 .

[25]  Hal B. Gregersen,et al.  The Right Way to Manage Expats , 1999 .

[26]  Bill D. Moyers,et al.  The Power of Myth , 1988 .

[27]  N. Forster.  International managers and mobile families: the professional and personal dynamics of trans-national career pathing and job mobility in the 1990s , 1992 .

[28]  N. Denzin,et al.  The Research Act , 1978 .

[29]  M. Arthur,et al.  Expatriate assignment versus overseas experience: Contrasting models of international human resource development , 1997 .

[30]  J. Nixon,et al.  Professional identity and the restructuring of higher education , 1996 .

[31]  Anne-Wil Harzing,et al.  The persistent myth of high expatriate failure rates , 1995 .

[32]  Chris Brewster,et al.  The coffee-machine system: how international selection really works , 1999 .

[33]  A. Welch.  The peripatetic professor: the internationalisation of the academic profession , 1997 .

[34]  H. Tsoukas.  The Missing Link: A Transformational View of Metaphors in Organizational Science , 1991 .