With more than 20,000 members, the Academy of Management is the preeminent professional association for management and organization scholars. The HRM division reviewers have selected the study entitled “Embeddedness and the Repatriation Intention of Company-backed and Self-initiated Expatriates” to be one of the top 10 percent in a field of thousands of submissions.
The study investigates the different reasons why expatriates prematurely return to their home countries. Premature repatriation is a major global company cost-driver and therefore an important area of research. The research team found that strong social ties within both the community and the organization prevent premature repatriation. They show that seconded employees are more likely to prematurely return to their home country if they are weakly embedded in the host country community. Expats who self-initiated their stay abroad are more likely to repatriate if they are weakly embedded in their jobs.
Based on these findings, the authors discuss recommendations for saving costs by preventing premature repatriation. The paper was co-authored by Prof. Meuer (main author) and Michèle Angstman from ETH Zürich and will be presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Anaheim (US) being held from August 6-9, 2016.
Meuer, J., Angstmann, M., & Tröster, C. (2016). Embeddedness and the Repatriation Intention of Company-backed and Self-initiated Expatriates, Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (in press).