Expatriate

Expatriates are employees who take on a temporary work assignment in a foreign country for their organizations. After defining the term expatriate, this entry chronologically describes and critically discusses the various phases of the expatriate life cycle, starting with recruitment and selection, before continuing with predeparture/on-assignment training, expatriate success, compensation, serial expatriation, and repatriation. In addition to discussing the managerial implications of each of the phases of the expatriate life cycle, this entry also critically considers the research implications of investigating a group of employees who may have nothing in common other than the fact that they have been sent by their organizations to a country other than their own.