Acting in the spirit of the whole: expatriate careers between the poles of personal intentions and of company and country policies

Expatriation has received a lot of research attention over the years due to the importance of expatriates to organizations as well as extensive impacts such international work experience has on expatriates themselves. To generate a better understanding about expatriation, it is essential to understand things in context, as "Every event and everything must come into being as a result of causes and conditions." (Dalai Lama, 1998). In this chapter we discuss four topics areas that we see as important issues in the international careers of expatriates and that have been studied within the GLOMO project. We also connect the themes of the following chapters with these four areas and briefly introduce the chapters.

First, we discuss expatriates’ career paths, the career capital they develop abroad and thus may be able to utilize afterwards, and the impacts of expatriation on the longer-term career success of individuals. Second, expatriates’ identities, well-being and embeddedness are discussed. Third, we introduce some key global mobility management challenges that companies face when managing expatriation. Finally, the role of the host country in expatriation is discussed as an additional theme that has received less attention in earlier research.