ABSTRACT
Organizations are increasingly affected by the forces of globalization and their employees are often called upon to take part in jobs that require various levels of global mobility. While the concept of global mobility is not new, its nature is changing and traditional corporate expatriation is being supplemented by different types of global work experiences (see Shaffer, Kraimer, Chen, and Bolino, 2012, for a review). Specifically, Shaffer and her colleagues (2012) categorized these global work experiences into two broad categories: expatriates (corporate expatriates and self-initiated expatriates) and global travelers (international business travelers, short-term assignees, and flexpatriates). Given differences in the nature and content of these various forms of global employment, global employees and their organizations face an array of decisions that affect the success of the global work experience. For example, the questions of why individuals decide to take part in different types of global work experiences and why organizations decide to send their employees on international assignments, though frequently raised in the literature, have not been systematically and theoretically summarized. Similarly, how corporate expatriates can adjust to living and working in a foreign country and how organizations can support this process have generally dominated the global mobility literature. But, what about other types of global employees?
