Expatriates’ motivations for going abroad

Abstract

Purpose It is widely accepted that expatriates have career expectations and motivations for working abroad that differ according to whether their posting is self-initiated or assigned by their employer. These factors also affect organisational embeddedness in the host country organisation. The purpose of this paper is to analyse job effort and career satisfaction in expatriates working for foreign organisations and investigates how these concepts depend on expatriates’ initial career plans and motivations for working abroad. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from two groups: managers of assigned expatriate workers and self-initiated expatriate workers. The surveys assessed workers’ motivations for going abroad, and differences between the two groups were compared by analysis of variance (ANOVA). A partial least squares (PLS) analysis was used to assess the effect of motivation on job performance. Findings There were positive relationships between the degree of organisational embeddedness in institutions abroad and job performance and career satisfaction. Perceptions of embeddedness depended on workers’ mindsets regarding their career ambitions. Practical implications This paper shows that self-initiated and assigned expatriates (AEs) require different staffing strategies, since variation in their motivations to go abroad are likely to affect their job effort in host organisations. Originality/value By linking expatriate motivation to go abroad with job performance and career satisfaction, contributions are made to the discussion of the differences between self-initiated and AEs.