Theorizing the meaning(s) of expatriate: Establishing boundary conditions for business expatriates

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of expatriates, arguing that sloppy use of the term in the past has led to problems of inconsistent research, incompatible findings and a lack of clarity in the field. The increasing interest over the last dozen years or so in other forms of international experience, often equally poorly conceptualised, has compounded the problem. We argue for the need for greater construct clarity in studies of expatriates and, by extension, of other forms of international experience. Specifically, we attempt to clarify to whom does the term ‘expatriate’, and specifically ‘business expatriate’, apply and the boundary conditions under which expatriate employment is enacted.

Full text

THEORIZING THE MEANING(S) OF ‘EXPATRIATE’:
ESTABLISHING BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR
BUSINESS EXPATRIATES
Accepted for publication in
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Citation:
McNulty, Y., & Brewster, C. (2017). Theorizing the meaning(s) of expatriate: Establishing
boundary conditions for business expatriates. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management (FORTHCOMING).
Copyright © 2017. Yvonne McNulty and Chris Brewster. All rights reserved.
Do not quote, cite, disseminate or re-publish without permission from the authors.
Yvonne McNulty, Ph.D.
School of Business
SIM University
461 Clementi Road
Singapore 599491
Email: ymcnulty@expatresearch.com
Telephone: +65.9107.6645
!

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THEORIZING THE MEANING(S) OF ‘EXPATRIATE’:
ESTABLISHING BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR BUSINES EXPATRIATES
Yvonne McNulty
SIM University, Singapore
and
Chris Brewster
Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK
Vaasa University, Vaasa, Finland
Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
ISCTE, Lisbon Portugal

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THEORIZING THE MEANING(S) OF ‘EXPATRIATE’:
ESTABLISHING BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR BUSINES EXPATRIATES
Abstract: This paper examines the concept of expatriates, arguing that sloppy use of
the term in the past has led to problems of inconsistent research, incompatible
findings and a lack of clarity in the field. The increasing interest over the last dozen
years or so in other forms of international experience, often equally poorly
conceptualised, has compounded the problem. We argue for the need for greater
construct clarity in studies of expatriates and, by extension, of other forms of
international experience. Specifically, we attempt to clarify to whom does the term
‘expatriate’, and specifically ‘business expatriate’, apply and the boundary conditions
under which expatriate employment is enacted.
Key words: expatriates; expatriate definition; boundary conditions for expatriation;
business expatriates; migrants; sojourners.

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INTRODUCTION
Defining concepts is frequently treated by scientists as an annoying
necessity to be completed as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible. A
consequence of this disinclination to define is often research carried out
like surgery performed with dull instruments. The surgeon has to work
harder, the patient has to suffer more, and the chances for success are
decreased. Like surgical instruments, definitions become dull with use
and require frequent sharpening, and eventually, replacement (Ackoff,
1971, p.671)
A good part of the work called ‘theorizing’ is taken up with the
clarification of concepts – and rightly so. It is in this matter of clearly
defined concepts that social science research is not infrequently defective
(Merton, 1958, p.114)
This article is based on the notion that there is a lack of consensus as to how expatriates
should be defined which has caused problems in the international human resource
management (IHRM) field; and that the situation is getting worse. We argue that there
has been a sloppy and almost casual use of terminology, a failure to define terms
adequately, or in many cases at all, and too many unstated assumptions about the people
being researched that, collectively, has resulted in reducing understanding of the
meanings of ‘expatriate’. This problem means that the measures used in empirical
studies may not accurately represent the underlying concept being tested (Cappelli,
2012). It may then be difficult to draw inferences from research and to assess and
compare findings across studies (Bono & McNamara, 2011). Critically, we argue that
the current situation has led to a considerable ‘jangle fallacy’ problem (Molloy &
Ployhart, 2012) and a set of poor expatriate concepts that “do not necessarily sum to a
coherent whole” (Johnson, Rosen, Chang, Djurdjevic, & Taing, 2012, p.63). This
results in the worrying problems of construct redundancy and construct proliferation
that causes confusion and misinterpretation, where “old and new constructs overlap to
such an extent they are largely interchangeable” resulting in a “proliferation of
definitions, indeterminate construct boundaries, and confounded measures” (Klein &

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Delery, 2012, p.59). Following Podsakoff, MacKenzie & Podsakoff’s (2016) line of
thinking, we propose a tighter definition of the term ‘expatriate’, and ‘business
expatriate’ in particular, and a more analytic approach to other forms of international
experience. To avoid misunderstanding, we include in this all kinds of business, and all
kinds of multinational enterprise (MNE), including those employed in the public sector
and non-governmental organizations. Our aim is to achieve construct clarity about the
concept of expatriates in the IHRM discipline for the next generation of expatriate
research. Specifically, we address:
(1) to whom does the term ‘business expatriate’ apply in the context of international
management research?
(2) what are the boundary conditions under which business expatriate employment is
enacted?
(3) what types of business expatriates make up the talent pool of candidates that are
available to MNEs for the purposes of global staffing?
We contribute to construct clarity (Cappelli, 2012; Molloy & Ployhart, 2012), in
this case about expatriates, by illustrating that the word ‘expatriate’ no longer
adequately describes the concept it claims to investigate. We offer a theory specific
statement about business expatriates that parsimoniously organizes and clearly
communicates the boundary conditions under which, and to whom, the concept does
and does not apply (Bacharach, 1989). Such precision will provide IHRM scholars with
a common language and clear conceptual understanding about expatriates in general
(Podsakoff et al., 2016). We hope it will stimulate further relevant and interesting
research and, perhaps, novel theoretical insights (LePine & Wilcox-King, 2010)
offering more detailed, practitioner-relevant implications that capture the context-
specific nature of expatriate employment.

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We use the term business expatriates because, as we shall argue, we want to
restrict study of expatriation in IHRM scholarship to those in employment, i.e., if there
is no business element then there is no opportunity to meet the management element of
IHRM. We further use ‘business’ expatriate rather than ‘corporate’ expatriate because
we want to include all kinds of ‘business’, and all kinds of MNE: corporate business
but also business in the public sector and in non-governmental organizations.
The article is organized into five sections. First, we briefly review the history of
expatriation and the early business and management studies of it as a base upon which
to build our ideas. We then show that few of the early papers attempted to define what
was meant by the term ‘expatriate’ with the vast majority of studies being conducted
through MNEs and the definition of expatriates being adopted from the companies that
used them. From that, we next summarise the 25 most cited articles, along with other
examples, to illustrate the extent of the problem with construct clarity as well as other
problems created by the lack of a consensus about expatriate concepts and international
experiences. We conclude from this analysis, and illustrate with examples from the
assigned expatriate (AE) and self-initiated expatriate (SIE) streams of research, that
there is a proliferation of messy terminology and concepts. To address these problems,
in the section that follows we build on theories of classical and family resemblance
approaches and prototype theory to develop a solution: theorising the meanings of
expatriate to establish construct clarity. Here, we offer two major insights from our
analysis to guide future studies: (1) we develop an empirically-driven theory specific
statement (definition) of business expatriates; and (2) we identify four boundary
conditions under which the business expatriate concept will and will not apply which,
as an inter-related set of features, represents jointly sufficient attributes that form a

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prototype (‘best example’) of a business expatriate. Fifth, and finally, we discuss
implications for research and draw some conclusions for future studies.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BUSINESS EXPATRIATES
The history of an academic discussion has important implications for the way that
knowledge is constructed and the assumptions that develop. Every academic field is
built on the foundations of the strengths (and weaknesses) of the early pioneers, with
the trajectory of the field developing from those insights and those flaws. Moving
forward requires us, first, to acknowledge the base upon which our current
understandings and knowledge have been built, to then fix the problems inherent in that
base.
Expatriation (from the Latin ex-patria: out of country) has existed from the time
that there were countries for people to expatriate from. People have always moved
about the earth, sometimes making seemingly incredible journeys; empires sent
emissaries to other lands, and religious history is full of stories of missionaries sent by
the church to achieve their objectives amongst ‘strangers’ (Freeman, 2008; Oberholster
& Doss, 2016; Porter, 1997; Walker, Norris, Lotz, & Handy, 1985). In international
trade the Silk Road from China through many different countries to the edge of Europe
dates back almost two millenia (Boulnois, 2004; Hipsher, 2008). The huge European
trading companies set up to trade with the Far East were established well over four
hundred years ago (Stening, 1994).
For much of this time, of course, national boundaries were rather fungible. The
formal introduction of passports as a necessity for travel was established only during
the First World War (Marrus, 1985). Although the term ‘expatriate’ was used first in
the 17th century, often to refer to the ‘pioneers’ (including artists, authors and

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entertainers) who left one (usually European) country to make a life elsewhere without
any real possibility of return, or to those who renounced their allegiance or were exiled
and denaturalized (see US Expatriation Act of 1868; The Library of Congress, n.d.), it
was used as a synonym for what we now call ‘migrants’. Since business studies
recognized internationalization (Coase, 1937; Dunning, 1958; Kolde & Hill, 1967;
Perlmutter, 1969) the number of people moving around the world to work in other
countries has increased, particularly in the last decades. Indeed, between 1970 and
2005, the number of multinational corporations (MNCs) grew from 7,000 to 70,000,
with the same rate of growth expected to continue for the next 30 years (Salt, 2008).
The focus of early academic research into business expatriates began in the
1950’s with studies of the expansion of American companies abroad including the
challenges associated with managing ‘overseas executives’ (Howell & Newman, 1959;
Mandell, 1958; Thompson, 1959; Wallace, 1959). This trend continued into the 1960s
with the first studies that looked at expatriates’ inter-cultural experiences (Lysgaard,
1955; Oberg, 1960), compensation (Schollhammer, 1969), careers (Gonzalez &
Negandhi, 1967), success factors (Kiernan, 1963), knowledge transfer (Negandhi &
Estafen, 1965), and selection (Borrmann, 1968; Ivancevich, 1969; Steinmetz, 1965,
1966; Stern, 1966; Triandis, 1963). It included studies of expatriates in non-corporate
settings, e.g., the military (Campbell, 1969), aid organizations (Taylor, 1968), and the
Peace Corps (Hapgood, 1968; Henry, 1966). A decade later, and with the launch of the
Journal of International Business Studies in 1970, the study of expatriates was
undoubtedly fuelled by a broader interest among scholars in MNEs (Beer & Davis,
1976; Buckley & Casson, 1976). There was a rush of published articles about why
companies used expatriates (Baker & Ivancevich, 1970; Edström & Galbraith, 1977),
their selection (Miller, 1973; Teague, 1970;), their communities (Cohen, 1977), their

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satisfaction (Ivancevich & Baker, 1970), and their compensation (Foote, 1977;
Reynolds, 1972). Correspondingly, studies began to appear about expatriates
themselves – their decision making criteria when undertaking an international
assignment (Mincer, 1978), success and failure characteristics (Baker & Ivancevich,
1971; Hays, 1971, 1974; Lanier, 1979; Miller, 1972; Miller & Cheng, 1978), training
needs (Jones, 1975), gender roles (Adler, 1979), assignment outcomes (Miller, 1975;
Misa & Fabricatore, 1979), and repatriation concerns (Gama & Pedersen, 1977;
Heenan, 1970; Howard, 1974, 1979; Murray, 1973). Research into Japanese MNEs
also started to emerge (Peterson & Schwind, 1977; Yoshino, 1976). Expatriate
researchers’ in the 1980’s and ’90’s followed these early beginnings with a dual-track
interest in, first, the policies that MNEs used for managing their expatriates
(Mendenhall, Dunbar, & Oddou, 1987; Peterson, Sargent, Napier, & Shim, 1996;
Torbiorn, 1982) and, second, an interest in the employees themselves (Black &
Gregersen, 1991; Boyacigiller, 1990; Feldman & Thomas, 1992; Hays, 1971; Tung,
1988).
CONCEPT CONFUSION
Generally, few of these early papers attempted to define what was meant by the term
‘expatriate’. The majority of studies were conducted through MNEs and simply
adopted the definitions they used. Expatriates’ were thus widely conceived of as being
sent by an organization (‘organizationally assigned’) to work abroad for a defined
period of time (‘temporarily’). Decades of research since the 1950s show that the
historic conceptualization of the expatriate construct is borne out of business
employment, with the demand for expatriates being “tailored to the organizational
context of working abroad” (Andresen, Bergdolt, Margenfeld, & Dickmann, 2014,

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p.2303) and based on the notion that expatriates will help organizations meet their
business objectives (Edström & Galbraith, 1977; Mendenhall et al., 1987; Tharenou &
Harvey, 2006; Tung, 1984; Tungli & Peiperl, 2009). While ‘corporate expatriate’ has
remained the predominant term to describe these individuals (e.g., Shaffer, Kraimer,
Chen, & Bolino, 2012), researchers have also described them as ‘traditional
expatriates’ (Suutari & Brewster, 2009), and less frequently as ‘business expatriates’
(Hudson & Inkson, 2006; Selmer, 2006) – the term that we adopt here.
More recently still the concept of expatriates, and business expatriates more
specifically, has been extended to include individuals engaging in many forms of
international experience (including work and non-work experience), among them:
self-initiated expatriates (SIEs; Shaffer et al., 2012; Suutari & Brewster, 2000);
sojourners, students and retirees (de Wit, Agarwal, Said, Sehoole, & Sirozi, 2008;
Pedersen, Neighbors, Larimer, & Lee, 2011); international business travellers
(Mayrhofer, Reichel, & Sparrow, 2012; Meyskens, von Glinow, Werther, & Clarke,
2009); and migrants (Al Ariss & Ozbilgin, 2010; Andresen et al., 2014). Critically,
some of these studies imply that business employment is not a criterion for
determining who is and who is not an expatriate in the context of IHRM studies.
Although rarely explicit, different sets of authors define expatriates in different
ways in terms of the scope of expatriation, the range of potential means of expatriation,
and its various types (e.g., Andresen & Biemann, 2013; Cerdin & Selmer, 2014;
Collings, Scullion, & Morley, 2007; Doherty & Dickmann, 2013; Mayrhofer et al.,
2012; Shaffer et al., 2012). Some of the typologies contribute to theory building and
some empirically examine the classificatory structures they propose (e.g., Andresen
et al., 2014; Andresen & Biemann, 2013; Cappellen & Janssens, 2010). Others suffer
from familiar problems in expatriate research, for example, small non-representative

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samples, cross-sectional data, limited country coverage, atypical firms, unreliable
measures of a single informant, and lacking in theoretical underpinnings (see critiques
in Cascio, 2012; Kraimer, Bolino, & Mead, 2016). Some confuse categories (e.g.,
migrants/ SIEs/ sojourners; Al Ariss, 2010; or partners of AEs/ SIEs; Muir, Wallace,
& McMurray, 2014; Vance & McNulty, 2014) while others are simply descriptive or
even prescriptive (Baruch, Dickmann, Altman, & Bournois, 2013; McPhail, Fisher,
Harvey, & Moeller , 2012).
Despite the enormous empirical literature about expatriates, and on AEs in
particular (e.g., see reviews by Andreason, 2008; Black & Mendenhall, 1990; Thomas
& Lazarova, 2006), the outcome is an increasing level of conceptual confusion about
the construct of business expatriates in the IHRM discipline. Following Molloy and
Ployhart’s (2012, p.154) argument, the problem of poor construct clarity has arisen
not because it lacks sufficient operationalization, but because “the theoretical
argument as to what the construct is – and why – is left implicit”. We contend that if
we claim to be IHRM researchers then our focus must remain on individuals employed
in business, or immediately impacted by business employment (e.g., business
expatriates, their families, co-workers, and so on) in order to distinguish them from
non-expatriates.
THE PROBLEM: POOR CONSTRUCT CLARITY
Although past ideas about expatriates have been insightful (e.g., Black, 1988; Guzzo,
Noonan, & Elron, 1994; Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985; Tung, 1987), with expatriation
theory developed (e.g., Kraimer & Wayne, 2004; Yan, Zhu, & Hall, 2002) but often
untested, recent changes in our understanding about expatriates requires new
theorizing. Suddaby (2010, p.346-347) notes that “constructs are the foundation of

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theory … and essential to the process of building strong theory.” As in other fields of
study, a lack of, or weak, construct clarity leads to conceptual confusion and ambiguity
and an inability to sensibly compare studies that may have used subtly different
definitions of their subject matter (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011; Cappelli, 2012;
Molloy & Ployhart, 2012). As a result there is sloppiness about what is being studied
and a proliferation of messy terminology. In the field of expatriate studies, research
endeavours (including at times our own) are being compromised by this terminological
sloppiness because researchers either fail to define their terms adequately, or they
define them but do not apply them rigorously, or they define them in a different way
than others researching the same phenomenon. This may explain why little of the
research into ‘new’ areas has been published in the top journals.
With few exceptions, the bulk of expatriate studies to date have not developed
or tested a theory of expatriates. Instead, the field has amassed a collection of ideas
and non-empirical constructs and variables that is: (1) poorly organized; (2)
conceptually confusing, because there is neither agreement about the terms nor the
definitions proposed; and, (3) descriptive (i.e., satisfies only the ‘what’ question).
There are supposedly conceptual articles but most are under-theorised, uncritically
borrowing concepts from fields such as careers, psychology, ethics or even from
practice, but adapting them poorly or imprecisely. Scholars are aware of the problem,
hence the reviews and attempts at typologies and taxonomies that we have noted above
along with the suggestions to use metaphors (Cappellen & Janssens, 2010; McPhail et
al., 2012; Osland, 2000). However, the lack of construct validity (e.g., Newman,
Harrison, Carpenter, & Rariden, 2016) remains. Missing from the field of expatriate
studies are two key elements: (1) a concept that specifies attributes or features about
business expatriates that in combination helps to distinguish the concept from other,

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related, concepts (Podsakoff et al., 2016); and, (2) a theoretical approach to explain or
predict the business expatriate phenomenon (how, when, and why) – the latter being
essential for theory development (Bacharach, 1989). To illustrate why construct clarity
in the field is necessary, we critique the 25 most influential articles assessing traditional
expatriates, and then, separately, more recent literature, to identify weaknesses in
construct clarity and to indicate the problems that this creates for the field as a whole.
Evidence of Poor Construct Clarity: Definitions in the Top 25 Most Cited
Articles
We examined the Web of Science and Scopus databases requesting cites with expat*
in order to get ‘expatriate’ and ‘expatriation’ results. Web of Science returned 9031
cases and Scopus 1593 cases. We then eliminated those that related to fish or to medical
problems and not to business employees. Next, we ordered the remaining cases by
number of citations, combined the lists (privileging those that appeared on both lists),
to identify the 25 most cited articles relating to expatriates or expatriation (see Table
1). There is a degree of subjective judgement involved in the list and we noted some
well-known articles that did not make the cut; but since our aim is to establish how the
terms were being used rather than to conduct a full literature review, the method is
acceptable and certainly identifies articles that have been influential over time.1 Since
citations increase over the years, almost by design the majority of the most cited articles
(n=14) are the older ones published between 1985 and 1999 that helped to establish the
field of expatriate studies as a business and management topic, with 11 of the 25 top
cited articles published since 2000.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
1"While our method is subject to some limitations (a focus on English language articles and selection of
a limited range of databases) advice from academic peers indicates that our sample is an adequate
representation of articles related to expatriate studies. We follow others in assuming that extending the
sample beyond the top 25 articles will result in decreasing marginal utility. "

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[insert Table 1 about here]
With our list in hand, we then reviewed these 25 articles and assessed their definitions
of ‘expatriate’ or ‘expatriation’. Remarkably, almost none of them defined the terms at
all (see Table 1); they just assumed that the words were self-explanatory. It was clear
from the methodology section of a number of the articles that the identification of the
concept had in effect been sub-contracted to the companies from which the researchers
were drawing their databases; if the company defined someone as an expatriate then,
for the purposes of the research, they were; if the company did not then they did not
count as expatriates for the research. Further, because much of the early research was
led by practitioners, it was they who “dictated the research agenda,” resulting in a large
body of descriptive research that lacks theoretical rigour and conceptual precision
(Kraimer et al., 2016, p.19).
The two articles that made some attempt to define the word ‘expatriate’ did so in
the context of comparing the assumed meaning of expatriates in prior literature with
some other form of international experience. Thus, Inkson, Arthur, Pringle & Barry
(1997), comparing expatriates with young Antipodians travelling for an overseas
experience, indicated that expatriates were abroad as a result of a company initiative,
that they had moved within the same company, on a temporary basis, and would return
to the same firm in the home-country. Suutari & Brewster (2000), the first article to
identify self-initiated expatriates, contrasted them with assigned expatriates, defined
as those sent by their employer “outside their home-country for a temporary
assignment” (p.417). We conclude from our analysis that there was (and is) a general
assumption in most of the literature that ‘we all know’ who expatriates were or are:
people defined as such by their employers, usually managers or individuals in

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relatively senior positions, sent on temporary assignment to another country, and
enjoying the enhanced terms, conditions and status of expatriate employment that the
lifestyle offered.
Evidence of Poor Construct Clarity: Definitions in Other Expatriate Literature
A wider review of extant literature beyond the top 25 most cited articles shows that
there were attempts elsewhere to define terms. As examples, we note one of the earliest
formulations by Aycan and Kanungo (1997) who defined expatriates as “employees of
business or government organizations who are sent by their organization to a related
unit in a country which is different from their own, to accomplish a job or organization-
related goal for a pre-designated temporary time period of usually more than six
months and less than five years in one term” (p.250). A later definition by Harrison,
Shaffer and Bhaskar-Shrinivas (2004) used a very similar formulation: “employees of
business organizations, who are sent overseas on a temporary basis to complete a time-
based task or accomplish an organizational goal” (p.203). These definitions implied:
(1) that expatriates were already employees of the organization before they became
expatriates; (2) that they were sent or ‘assigned’ by (certain kinds of) organizations,
being then referred to as ‘organisation-assigned expatriates’ or ‘assigned expatriates’;
and, (3) that employment by such an organization is a key characteristic, thus
distinguishing business expatriates who are sent to accomplish a job or organization-
related goal from non-business expatriates (e.g., tourists, immigrants, refugees,
entrepreneurs, and students).
The definitions exclude those who were not company employees before they
became expatriates, such as experts in oil and gas (and other) industries recruited
directly to international postings or already in the host country. Definitions also

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exclude those from non-governmental organizations such as charities, aid
organizations, religious bodies and international sports and cultural associations. For
example, people working for the European Union in Brussels, or the United Nations in
New York or Geneva, apply for their jobs through competitive examination and are
then hired in those cities - only a small minority of them are, respectively, Belgian, US
or Swiss citizens. The definitions also exclude those who are abroad for less than six
months or more than five years. On the other hand, they do include all those working
for a business in a country which is not their own, even if they are not managers or
specialists - a restriction that others (e.g., Cerdin & Selmer, 2014) would now insist
on.
With the recent introduction of research about SIEs (Suutari & Brewster, 2000),
conceptualization of expatriates now positions them according to two distinct streams:
SIEs and assigned expatriates (AEs). This clarification has been more or less repeated
in other recent conceptualizations (e.g., Haslberger, Brewster, & Hippler, 2014, p.2;
Shaffer et al., 2012, p.1286). While these conceptualizations have attempted to provide
much needed clarity, we are still not convinced that this body of work overcomes the
problem of poor construct clarity rather than further contributes to it, given that the
terms ‘expatriate,’ ‘assigned expatriate,’ and ‘SIE’ remain under-theorised and their
definition is usually unstated. It is a problem that has existed for decades and which
continues to grow. There are now, for example, texts that use the term ‘expatriate’ to
describe all categories of international movers including migrants (Al Ariss & Syed,
2011), whilst others take precisely the opposite view - “the expatriate has migrant
status” (Andresen et al., 2014, p.2308). Similarly, the same label (e.g., SIE) is used for
conceptually different constructs (c.f. Cerdin & Selmer, 2014; Doherty & Dickmann,
2013). Critically, we seem to be no nearer to determining the boundary conditions that

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will help us to decide to whom the term ‘expatriate’ (and ‘business expatriate’ more
specifically) does and does not apply.
Evidence of Construct Proliferation: Terms Used in Other Expatriate
Literature
For expatriates, weak construct clarity has arisen as a result of construct proliferation
and jangle fallacy, i.e., the use of many different terms to imply the same meaning. To
illustrate our point, we reviewed extant literature published since 2000 in Business
Source Premier, Emerald Fulltext, IngentaConnect, PsyINFO, Sage Journals Online,
Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar and found that, while the focus of these
studies is expatriates, many different terms are used. For example, an ‘expatriate’
(Collings et al., 2007) has also been referred to as an ‘international manager’ (Bonache-
Perez & Pla-Barber, 2005); an ‘international assignee’ (Bonache & Zarraga-Oberty,
2008; Reiche, Kraimer, & Harzing, 2011); an ‘internationally mobile manager’
(Andresen & Biemann, 2013); a ‘global manager’ (Cappellen & Janssens, 2010;
Suutari, 2003); ‘managers with global careers’ (Suutari & Taka, 2004); an ‘expatriate
manager’ (Black, 1988; Black & Stephens, 1989; Harvey & Moeller, 2009; Paik &
Sohn, 2004; Thomas, Lazarova, & Inkson, 2005); an ‘expatriate assignee’ (Toh &
Denisi, 2007); a ‘corporate expatriate’ (Selmer, 1999); ‘corporate executives’ (Harvey,
1989; Inkson et al., 1997); an ‘international executive’ (Caligiuri, Hyland, Joshi, &
Bross, 1998); or simply an ‘assignee’ (Bennett, Aston, & Colquhoun, 2000; Bhaskar-
Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005). Notably, included in this list are some
articles in our ‘top 25’.
A broader, if less systematic, review of expatriate studies from 1963 to the
present indicates that the problem of jangle fallacy has existed since the inception of

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the field, with many studies using different terminology to refer to the same thing; for
example, corporate expatriate/ corporate executive/ corporate manager/ expatriate
manager/ expatriate personnel/ managerial expatriates/ overseas executive/ overseas
personnel (Andreason, 2008; Borrmann, 1968; Gonzalez & Negandhi, 1967; Hammer,
Hart, & Rogan, 1998; Hays, 1971; Heenan, 1970; Miller, 1975; Negandhi, 1966; Stern,
1966; Tan & Mahoney, 2004); or international manager/ international assignee/
internationally mobile managers/ international personnel/ foreign managers
(Andresen & Biemann, 2013; Arthur & Bennett, 1995; Kiernan, 1963; Murray, 1973;
Schollhammer, 1969; Steinmetz, 1966); or international assignments/ international
work assignments/ long-term assignments/ overseas assignments (Ivancevich, 1969;
Kraimer et al., 2016; Miller, 1972; Tung, 1981); or expatriates of host country origin/
ex-host-country nationals/ ethnically similar-ethnically different expatriates/
returnees/ overseas returnees/ sea turtles (Fan, Zhang, & Zhu, 2013; Guo, Porschitz,
& Alves, 2013; Ho, Seet, & Jones, 2015; Thite, Srinivasan, Harvey, & Valk, 2009;
Tung, 2008; Tung & Lazarova, 2006; Yoshida et al., 2009). Obviously this plethora of
words and phrases comes with implicit baggage. It may simply not reflect the people
the authors are discussing or it may be trying to narrow the field to the people in their
sample: some of the terms, for example, imply that the authors are only interested in
internationally mobile managers (or presumably narrower, even executives), or imply
that they are not interested if the foreign stay involves crossing a land border rather
than an ocean.
Equally concerning are studies where the above terms are used interchangeably
in the same article to mean the same thing; for example, where international,
expatriate, overseas, and foreign assignment are used interchangeably to imply
‘expatriates’ or ‘expatriation’ (see as examples Kraimer et al., 2016, p.17; Kraimer,

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Shaffer, Harrison, & Ren, 2012, p.404; Thomas et al., 2005, p.341; Yan et al., 2002,
p.373); or where a suite of studies by the same author has used interchangeable terms,
e.g., expatriates/ international executive/ overseas executive/ multinational executives/
expatriate managers (Howard, 1970, 1974a, 1974b, 1979, 1982). Redundant terms
have also been used, e.g., foreign expatriate (Holtbrugge & Ambrosius, 2015).
In addition, there has been a plethora of proposed new concepts and terms/
abbreviations (sometimes frankly ludicrous) for topics for which there are already
appropriate concepts and terms, adding to the ‘alphabet soup’ and leading to
inconsistent research with inconsistent findings. Examples include, among a mass of
many possibilities: flexpatriate/ assigned traveller/ self-initiated traveller/ domestic
international manager (Andresen et al., 2014; Mayerhofer, Hartmann, Michelitsch-
Reidl, & Kollinger, 2004; Tharenou & Harvey, 2006) for international business
travellers; propatriate/ glopatriate/ intra-SIEs and CAEs (Andresen et al., 2014;
McNulty et al., 2009; McPhail et al., 2012) for AEs; inter-SIEs/ drawn expatriates/
self-initiated corporate expatriates/ organizational self-initiated expatriates (Altman
& Baruch, 2012; Andresen et al., 2014;) for SIEs; and halfpats (Teagarden, 2010) for
bi-culturals.
The SIE stream has been particularly prone to the problem of ill-defined concepts
and overlapping terminology. For example, SIEs have been referred to as self-selecting
expatriates (Richardson & McKenna, 2002), self-directed expatriates (Richardson,
2006), self-initiated foreign workers (Harrison et al., 2004), independent expatriates
(Richardson, 2008), independent internationally mobile professionals (Tharenou,
2013), self-initiated movers (Thorn, 2009) and inter-organizational SIEs/inter-SIEs
(Andresen et al., 2014). Terms have been interchanged in the same article, for instance,
where Tharenou and Caulfield (2010) simultaneously refer to SIEs as self-expatriates

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and self-made expatriates. Others use the SIE conceptualization but with different
labels, such as SE (Alshahrani & Morley, 2015; Biemann & Andresen, 2010). Suutari
and Brewster (2000) in their seminal study identified many different kinds of SIEs
(young opportunists, job seekers, officials, localised professionals, international
professionals, and members of dual career families), yet other categorizations have
been noted since (e.g., Andresen et al., 2014) with inadequate integration of the
foundational terminology and ideas. Even more concerning is overlapping
conceptualisations: compare Doherty et al.’s (2013) SIE criteria (relocation across a
national border; a move based on individual volition; and that the move is temporary)
with criteria by Cerdin and Selmer (2014; self-initiated international relocation; regular
employment (intentions); intentions of a temporary stay; and skilled/ professional
qualifications).
Newman et al. (2016) suggest that problems of construct clarity emerge because
“[N]ew constructs can change thinking, yield impact, and heighten scholarly
reputations; so there is a strong incentive to propose and establish them” (p.4). But the
frequent result is poor “construct mixology” (p.1) that is “scientifically stagnant” (p.3)
arising from new theoretical constructs that are inadequately conceptualized and
operationalized when mixed together with content from older, established constructs.
In other words, it is too common for researchers to not only fail to define their concepts
and terms adequately, but that they often ignore overlaps with similar, long-established
concepts addressing the same people but with more common words. These same
researchers often make unstated assumptions about the people they are researching.
They may assume, for example, they will all have been sent from their MNE’s
headquarters, or that they are all managers, or that they all know nothing about their
new country before arriving there, or that forms of international experience that were

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previously un-discussed in the literature are suddenly ‘new’ or ‘growing’ just because
a new label has been used. This makes the comparison of findings difficult, or even
impossible, because we cannot be sure whom it is that people are actually researching.
THEORISING THE MEANING(S) OF ‘EXPATRIATE’
Why Construct Clarity Matters
In order for future studies of expatriates to have their intended impact there needs to
be “clear agreement on the substantive definitional content” (Suddaby, 2010, p.348) –
in this case about business expatriates – and that it is linked to their core characteristics.
Construct clarity will, in turn, result in higher levels of construct validity, i.e., better
and more reliable measures (Gerhart, 2012). In the case of business expatriates we see
that, “[o]ver time and over multiple empirical applications, the definition of a construct
tends to drift – that is, it acquires substantial ‘surplus meaning’ (MacCorquodale &
Meehl, 1948) or meaning beyond the parameters of its original intended definition …
it is critically important for the theorist to strip away the extraneous meaning that has
become attached to a construct … by offering a contextually specific and clear
definition of the term” (Suddaby, 2010, p.348).
To overcome what we see as a fundamental problem in relation to poor construct
validity about the meanings of ‘expatriate’, we develop a definition of business
expatriates as a means of organizing the field’s collective knowledge. We take as a
starting point that scholars in our field are engaged with and passionate about the role
that expatriate studies play in the field of IHRM. Thus, we all benefit from imposing a
parsimoniously organized and clearly communicated statement about the boundary
conditions under which, and to whom, the business expatriate concept does and does
not apply.

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Bacharach (1989) notes that theory offers “a statement of relations between
concepts within a set of boundary assumptions and constraints [being] no more than a
linguistic device to organize a complex empirical world” (p.496). Critically, “theories
are constrained by their specific critical bounding assumptions” (p.498). Tennyson &
Cocchiarella (1986) suggest that while definitions can help us to understand a concept,
it is the boundaries that help us to understand the limits of that concept, i.e., what the
concept is not. In order to progress towards a theory of expatriates, we follow the lead
of others (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011; Jack, Calas, Nkomo, & Peltonen, 2008) in
challenging the underlying assumptions in extant literature about the construct clarity
of ‘expatriates’, from which to then determine its boundary conditions. We have tried
not to reinforce, build upon or extend the established body of research about
expatriates, but to disrupt (‘over-problematize’) its assumptions in such a way as to
encourage others to develop better and more reliable measures, and more interesting
and relevant research questions, leading to the development of a more rigorous theory
about expatriates.
Defining Concepts: Family Resemblance vs Classical Approaches
As we have shown, there has been considerable disagreement about the conceptual
structure that should be followed. On the one hand, concepts can be defined “by
individually necessary and collectively sufficient attributes” (the ‘classical’ view of
'necessary' and 'sufficient'; Goertz, 2006, p.502), whereby there is no ambiguity as to
whether an item does or does not belong to the concept: membership is ‘all or nothing’
as long as it has the necessary or jointly sufficient attributes (the possession of them all;
Sartori, 1970, 1984). Sufficient features and attributes are those that are unique and
possessed only by exemplars of the concept; thus, not all items are required to have

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sufficient attributes. Importantly, the classical view holds that a concept will have far
more necessary than sufficient features and attributes, and that necessary (essential)
features can be grouped to be ‘jointly sufficient’. In contrast, concepts have also been
defined according to the extent to which an item shares a feature or attribute with at
least one, and probably several, other items that belong to the concept, indicating that
membership is determined by degrees of commonality (‘fit’) of the features and
attributes of the particular item (the 'family resemblance' view; Rosch & Mervis, 1975;
Wittgenstein, 1953). Critically, differences in the underlying logical and structural rules
of the classical vs family resemblance approach can result in vastly different numbers
of features or attributes belonging to the concept depending on which one is used
(Podsakoff et al., 2016). For example, the classical view holds that as the number of
necessary features and attributes increases, the number of items that will belong to the
concept decreases on the basis of it being harder for an item to meet all the criteria
(Sartori, 1984). Conversely, the family resemblance approach accepts that as the
number of defining features and attributes increases, so too can the number of items
that sometimes qualify to be included in the concept, i.e., if there are more features and
attributes but an item only needs to satisfy one, then the likelihood of meeting only one
feature or attribute increases (Goertz, 2006).
The problem we see in expatriate studies is that the classical view has rarely been
applied (see Doherty et al., 2013 for a recent, although narrowly focused, exception).
The family resemblance approach has been more common and is exemplified in more
recent studies (Al Ariss & Syed, 2011; Andresen et al., 2014; Andresen & Biemann,
2013; Baruch et al., 2013; Shaffer et al., 2012) but has resulted in such broad
conceptualizations of the expatriate concept as to undermine its construct
(discriminant) validity. We see this, for example, in long lists of features and attributes

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that have become so vague and ambiguous as to become almost meaningless. This then
leads to greater levels of systematic measurement error, i.e., there being something
wrong with the measurement item or it being wrongly used by the researcher
(Viswanathan, 2005). Poor discriminant validity in turn undermines the expatriate
concept’s nomological validity and leads to decreased confidence in the findings
obtained from expatriate research: it becomes difficult to determine whether a related
concept is an antecedent, consequence or correlate of the concept at hand (Podsakoff et
al., 2016). It also leads to results having multiple plausible interpretations and
explanations, thus contributing to a lack of confidence in a study’s findings when an
article is submitted for review (Bono & McNamara, 2011).
If the problem of poor construct clarity and construct validity persists, it will
inhibit real progress in the field. When large groups of scholars take on a ‘hot’ topic
that suffers from poor construct validity, and then research it ‘to death’ (arguably the
case with the explosion of SIE research), it can result in a body of research that is only
publishable in less rigorous journals and has little real value. Moreover, conceptual
confusion can lead to ‘good’ scholars abandoning a worthwhile topic when the research
base upon which they are drawing is so conceptually flawed that it produces
diminishing returns. As Barley (2006, p.17) suggests, “like dire wolves, researchers run
in packs. Thus, the papers that appear in journals during an era often cluster around a
relatively small set of topics and conversely, papers written on particular topics tend to
cluster in time. … such clustering occurs … because members of invisible colleges
agree on which questions and problems are currently important to their field’s further
progress … or it may simply be that topics fall in and out of fashion as researchers first
crowd into areas and then eventually become bored.”

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Business Expatriates through the Lens of Prototype Theory
Because, as suggested earlier, the family resemblance approach (whether implicitly or
unintentionally applied) has not progressed the field of expatriate studies towards
greater construct clarity, we adopt the classical view to determine the necessary
(essential) and sufficient (unique) features and attributes of the business expatriate
concept and, by implication, closely related concepts (e.g., business travellers,
sojourners, migrants). Before we do, we draw on prototype theory to explain how we
approach it.
Prototypes are the centres of clusters of similar items, with the centre of the
cluster (the ‘prototype’) being well established and agreed upon by experts and thus
representing the best example of the category at hand (Hampton, 2006; Rosch &
Mervis, 1975). By extension, prototype concepts are similarity-based clusters of
categories with a prototype at the centre but with the boundary between other categories
often being less clear and argued over (Hampton, 1998). The category to which an item
is placed in a prototypical concept and whether (or not) it is determined to be the actual
prototype (best example) depends largely on the features and attributes of that item in
relation to the best example (the ‘prototype’), i.e., its relative similarities or differences
to other items and the categories to which those items belong (Rosch, 1978; Sutcliffe,
1993). Theory-based prototypes - of the kind we are building here - differ in that they
additionally hold sets of information about the relationships between features and
attributes. Hence, an item’s degree of membership (‘fit’) to a particular category within
a theory-based prototype is more than a simple function of having (or not having) a
necessary or sufficient feature or attribute; it must also have the right relationships to
other features and attributes otherwise its similarity to the prototype will be poor
(Hampton, 2006).

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Prototype theory positions the categorisation of items by determining their
membership vs non-membership (Rosch & Mervis, 1975), low vs high degree of
membership (Geeraerts, 1989), borderline, typical or atypical membership (Hampton,
1998; Murphy, 2002), and degree of membership vs degree of representativeness
(Geeraerts, 1989). Four phenomena are used to explain how and where an item may or
may not be categorised and the extent of its membership in a particular category
(Hampton, 1997; Rosch, 1978). The first, vagueness, implies that the item is close to
the prototypical criterion but does not match it exactly, therefore being ‘borderline’ and
being placed in a closely related category. Typicality refers to matching the criterion or
exceeding it, thus being ‘typical’ of the prototype and being included in the category;
category membership is therefore high. Genericity suggests a partial match to the
prototype but with features or attributes that are not matched by all category members,
thus it may be sufficient to be included in a broadly-related (general) category but not
the prototype category; category membership may be low. Opacity determines that
there is no generally held or widely accepted rule about the features or attributes of an
item such that it can be successfully categorized in a theory-based prototype with a
relative degree of confidence; opaque categorizations often occur, then, by deferring to
‘experts’, or in the absence of experts, by risking the assignment of an item to the wrong
category or by avoiding categorization altogether.
In the context of our earlier discussion about the classical view of concept
definitions, prototype theory does not hold to the view that definitions have criteria that
are indispensable in order to isolate them from other concepts. Rather, prototype theory
rejects the idea that concepts contain only a single set of defining attributes. Instead, it
views concepts as being dynamic and flexible based on the sometimes-shifting
boundaries of the concepts it aims to describe (Geeraerts, 1989). The challenge in

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adapting prototype theory to defining the concept of expatriates is to steer away from
being unnecessarily rigid (the classical approach of ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’) while
at the same time avoiding a ‘kitchen sink’ approach by including too many features and
attributes. We must find a middle ground that provides sufficient boundaries while
being flexible enough to address the many obvious overlaps between the various
international experience concepts we consider.
While we believe it is necessary to view business expatriates through the lens of
prototype theory, we are convinced that the classical approach is essential in
determining necessary and sufficient criteria. We combine these approaches to ensure
that we can achieve our aim of defining terms in a way that clarifies our area of study
(business expatriates) on the basis that prior attempts that have unintentionally favoured
the family resemblance approach have not resulted in the construct clarity the field
clearly needs. To guide our conceptualisation of business expatriates, we adopt four
prototype theory characteristics (Geeraerts, 1989; Rosch, 1978): (a) that the expatriate
concept more broadly cannot be defined by means of a single set of criteria; (b) that the
expatriate concept more broadly takes the form of a clustered and overlapping set of
categories; (c) membership to the business expatriate category is by degrees of
relatedness wherein not every member is equally representative in the category at every
point in time; and, (d) that the business expatriate concept is blurred at the edges.
THE SOLUTION: ESTABLISHING CONSTRUCT CLARITY
We build on the five well-established stages of insights from social science theory
(Locke, 2012; Suddaby, 2010) and identify four boundary conditions that specify who
is and who is not included in the concept of business expatriates. We then establish
clear terminology for our area of study. Next, we bring these thoughts together into a

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theory-specific statement, after which we specify the semantic relationships with a
simple Figure and emphasize logical consistency.
Boundary Conditions for Business Expatriates !
The business expatriate concept is not universal but conceptualized according to the
context in which these expatriates live and work. We identify four conditions under
which the concept will and will not apply which, as an inter-related set of features,
represents jointly sufficient attributes that form the prototype (‘best example’) of a
business expatriate.
The first condition under which the concept will or will not apply in relation to
IHRM research is that a business expatriate must be organizationally employed. For
AEs, this implies employment with an MNE or global organization in a professional
role as part of their career. For SIEs the organization may be an MNE or it may be a
local organization. While this condition does not require employment at the managerial
level, it does exclude, for example, work by ‘overseas experience’ (OE) seekers (Inkson
et al., 1997; Inkson & Myers, 2003) as backpackers picking up casual employment for
the purposes of funding further travel. This criterion distinguishes business expatriates
from sojourners, migrants, retired, and unemployed SIEs and tourists (Shaffer et al.,
2012; Tharenou, 2013).
The second condition under which the concept will or will not apply in relation
to IHRM research is the intended length of time abroad for the business expatriate, i.e.,
the temporal dimension (Andresen & Biemann, 2013; Konopaske & Werner, 2005;
McPhail et al., 2012). This condition is determined by the originally planned temporary
nature of the expatriate’s stay in the host-country, irrespective as to the actual length of
time they are employed there. The intended length of time abroad for a business

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expatriate can be short (1-12 months for short-term assignees), mid to long term (1-5
years for typical Western AEs, or considerably longer for some Japanese employees;
Tungli & Peiperl, 2009), and indefinitely for employed SIEs. We also note here the
situation of what have been called ‘global careerists’ (Cerdin & Bird, 2008; Peiperl &
Jonsen, 2007; Suutari, Tornikoski, & Mäkelä, 2012) or ‘global/ international itinerants’
(Banai & Harry, 2004; Näsholm, 2012) who may remain outside their home-country
for substantial parts of their career, but in relation to each assignment they meet our
boundary condition for intended length of time.
A third condition under which the expatriate concept will or will not apply in
relation to IHRM research is whether the individual attains citizenship of the host-
country. Some definitions are based almost entirely on this point (“expatriates are non-
citizens, including home-country nationals (i.e., citizens of the home-country of the
parent company), and third country nationals”; Tan & Mahoney, 2004, p.200). In the
case of those with dual-nationality, the condition is determined by whether the
expatriate obtains employment as a citizen or non-citizen of the host-country.
Citizenship of the host-country or nominating the host-country as the home-country
negates expatriate status because citizens cannot also be a foreign-born person who is
living abroad (see Dumont & Lemaitre, 2005), being for all intents and purposes
already ‘home’. While expatriates operating as permanent residents of a host-country
may use their status as an avenue to eventual citizenship, they nonetheless remain
expatriates until it is acquired. In some small (but perhaps growing) minority of cases
this may be unnecessarily limiting – there will be bi-cultural people (Brannen &
Thomas, 2010; Furusawa & Brewster, 2014) with dual nationality, and multiculturals
(Fitzsimmonds, Miska, & Stahl, 2011). There will also be children (including third
culture kids; Selmer & Lam, 2004) who have been socialised into global mobility at a

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young age (Alshahrani & Morley, 2015) and grown up with expatriate or migrant
parents in one country whilst having or being entitled to a passport from another (i.e.,
expatriates of host-country origin; Thite et al., 2009). When they transfer to the host-
country the experience of all of them may be so similar to that of other expatriates that
we would want to include them. We deal with these exceptions below when we discuss
the nature of expatriation as a prototype and note that, for the time being, these
exceptions will be few. However, there may in the future be a question about this
boundary condition in terms of the role of the European Union: already the distinction
between citizens of one member state and another has little legal import, and this may
reduce further. Nevertheless, at present this condition is fulfilled for intra-European
expatriates also.
A fourth condition under which the business expatriate concept will or will not
apply in relation to IHRM research is regulatory cross-border (legal) compliance
necessitated by organizational employment in combination with non-citizenship. This
condition is determined by the legal context in which expatriate employment is enacted
and whether people have the right to stay, and are allowed to seek work legally, in a
specific country. Generally speaking, the IHRM literature has eschewed the study of
international drug- or people-smuggling rings, for example, and we exclude
organizations and individuals explicitly operating in illegal ways. This condition is not
affected, however, by the issue of non-compliance per se, recognizing that some
organizations may try to take advantage of the law and that others are particularly
vulnerable to (unintentional) non-compliance issues (due, for example, to residency,
work permit, and tax irregularities) which can result in financial penalties and fines for
organizations, and imprisonment for some illegal workers (EY, 2016; PwC & RES
Forum, 2015).

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Taken together, these four boundary conditions represent the jointly sufficient
attributes that form the prototype (‘best example’) of a business expatriate. A concept’s
degree of membership (‘fit’) to the business expatriate category is determined by the
extent to which it has the jointly sufficient attributes necessary to qualify for inclusion
and/or lesser degrees of representativeness. These are outlined in Table 2.
[insert Table 2 about here]
Establishing Clear Terms for Business Expatriates and Expatriation
We developed a glossary of all terms (well over a hundred) used for ‘international
experience’ in the IHRM literature (available from the first named author on request).
It formed the basis for developing our own definition of business expatriates and against
which to apply our boundary conditions to other international experience concepts.
Extant literature acknowledges that the path to becoming a business expatriate can
take different forms of expatriation, i.e., that it can be organization-initiated or self-
initiated. Most business expatriates will thus be either AEs or SIEs, noting that as long
as the SIE is employed by an organization and meets all other criteria, he or she is a
business expatriate. In the context of our theory-based prototype, we conceptualise AEs
as constituting five specific sub-types that vary according to their purposes and country
of origin: parent-country nationals (PCNs), third country nationals (TCNs), inpatriates,
short-term assignees (STAs) and expatriates of host country origin (EHCOs). Common
to all is, first, that their form of business expatriation is controlled and directed by an
organization and, second, that each sub-type possesses the four jointly sufficient
attributes necessary for membership in the broader business expatriate category.
Separating the sub-types is that each may be used for different purposes (e.g., PCNs are

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typically used for coordination and control, Edström & Galbraith, 1977; whereas
inpatriates are mainly focused on knowledge transfer, Reiche, Harzing, & Kraimer,
2009). Moreover, TCNs and inpatriates do not originate from the HQ country of the
MNE whereas PCNs do. These differences do not disqualify any from inclusion in the
business expatriate concept.
In contrast to AEs and within the context of our theory-based prototype, SIEs
have not, in the first instance, gone to another country at the behest of an organization.
A variety of different groups have been studied under the SIE rubric. There are, for
example, localised expatriates (LOPATs) - assigned expatriates who, after completing
a long-term assignment contract then transition to full local terms and conditions in the
host-country as directed by either the employer or at their own request (Tait, De Cieri,
& McNulty, 2014). Also included are permanent transferees (PTs; commonly known
as ‘one-way movers’), defined as employees that resign from the home-country office
and are hired by the host-country office of the same MNE but for which there is no
return (repatriation) to the home-country, no guarantee of company-sponsored
reassignment elsewhere, and only local terms and conditions offered in the host-country
(Tait et al., 2014; Yates, 2011). Another type of SIE is foreign executives in local
organizations (FELOs) who hold local managerial positions supervising HCNs in local
organizations where these organizations have their headquarters (Arp, 2014; Arp,
Hutchings, & Smith, 2013). There is also a much-studied cohort of academic
expatriates (e.g., Trembath, 2016) and a less studied group of employees of
intergovernmental organizations that have moved abroad in order to take up their
employment (Suutari & Brewster, 2000). All these SIEs possesses the four jointly
sufficient attributes necessary for membership in the broader business expatriate
category. Just as for AEs, the criterion for inclusion as an SIE within the broader

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category of business expatriates is that they are employed by an organization
irrespective of whether employment is secured before or after going abroad, and
whether one is employed in local organizations or within MNEs.
Theory Specific Statement about Business Expatriates
This leads us to the conclusion that the field of expatriate studies requires, as a starting
point, a theory-specific statement about business expatriates, on the basis that they are
the focus of much research conducted in the IHRM field of expatriate studies. Based
on our earlier research (McNulty & Brewster, 2017), and building on the work of others
(e.g., Aycan & Kanungo, 1997; Harrison et al., 2004; Shaffer et al., 2012; Tan &
Mahoney, 2004), we define business expatriates as,
legally working individuals who reside temporarily in a country of which
they are not a citizen in order to accomplish a career-related goal, being
relocated abroad either by an organization, by self-initiation or directly
employed within the host-country.
We contend that this theory-specific statement about business expatriates
supports the major purposes for which expatriates have been (and will likely continue
to be) utilized in the IHRM discipline. Specifically, the definition implies that
employment by an organization is a key characteristic, thus distinguishing business
expatriates from non-business expatriates (e.g., tourists, immigrants, retirees, refugees,
sojourners). Our focus on ‘business expatriates’ as the unit of analysis is deliberate. It
arises from several necessary and jointly sufficient criteria - (1) that we are IHRM
scholars and therefore interested in the management of people who work for
organizations; and (2) that we are interested in individuals who: (a) engage in
international geographical mobility; (b) who have legal employment; (c) with
organizations and businesses; and (d) in a country where they do not hold citizenship.

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Many, but by no means all, of these expatriates will be on enhanced terms and
conditions to recognize their relocation. This is usual for AEs and it is not unknown
for some SIEs to negotiate some form of enhanced travel arrangements, expenses and
so on. It is also the case that government employees and employees of
intergovernmental organizations apply the same ‘international’ terms and conditions
in all countries, but they invariably include salary adjustments and additional expenses
for accommodation, schooling, and other cost of living items. Critically, whilst
remuneration may be seen as one of the prototypical elements of the definition of AEs,
at the blurrier edges of the prototype it is not central to our definition.
Semantic Relationships of Business Expatriates to Other Forms of International
Experience
To follow through on the notion of business expatriates as a prototype we need to be
clear about the boundaries and identify the blurrier edges of our definition and the
relationship to other concepts (see Klein & Delery, 2012). Just as thinking about the
position of a penguin (which cannot fly) helps us to understand the notion of a ‘bird’,
we have to understand how business expatriates are related to other concepts and to
what degree (typically, vaguely, generally or opaquely). As we have seen, in prior
studies the business expatriate concept is part of a better or worse defined complex web
of relationships within the overall broader concept of ‘international experiences’ (both
work and non-work) that includes migrants, sojourners and business travellers. Who,
then, is a business expatriate?
As might be anticipated from our discussion above, AEs and SIEs meet the
boundary conditions for being a business expatriate; they match or exceed the criteria
thus being ‘typical’ of the prototype; category membership is therefore high.

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The international experience concepts that do not meet the boundary conditions
and exist alongside it in ‘vaguely’ or ‘generally’ similar categories include: (a)
international business travellers and commuters; (b) global virtual team members and
global domestics (engaging in psychological, but not physical, mobility); (c) EHCOs
with citizenship/status of the host- country; and (d) sojourners, including retirees and
students, because they do not meet the condition of business employment. Also
excluded are: (e) migrants unless they meet all jointly sufficient criteria, and if so only
until citizenship is acquired after which they no longer meet the condition of requiring
regulatory cross-border (legal) compliance; and, (f) SIEs that are not employed by
organizations (Doherty et al., 2013), including foreigners compensated ‘off the books’
(Al Ariss & Syed, 2011; Inkson & Myers, 2003) as is the case with many young people
and migrant hopefuls whose ‘cash jobs’ often do not suit their qualifications because of
problems in attaining appropriate visa and work permits. This is conceptualized in
Figure 1.
[insert Figure 1 about here]
Critical to our understanding of the business expatriate prototype is the notion
that prototype definitions, in general, allow us to determine that there may be other
concepts that are more or less closely related to the ‘best example’ prototype but there
may be few that fit the prototype exactly. For example, the concept of migrants (as well
as some types of SIEs; Doherty et al., 2013) suggests a partial match to the business
expatriate prototype but with features and attributes that are not matched by all category
members, i.e., skilled migrants are likely to have more features and attributes than
unskilled migrants and refugees (Al Ariss, 2010; Cerdin, Abdeljalil-Diné, & Brewster,
2014) and is insufficient to be included in the prototype category of business expatriates

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specifically. Prototype membership is therefore low. Similarly, international business
travellers and commuters possess two of the four boundary conditions for inclusion in
the business expatriate concept but because these people do not require regulatory
cross-border (legal) compliance for the purposes of residency (though they may for
work permits), they are ‘borderline’ and vaguely related to business expatriates. Each
is thus placed in a closely related category and, indeed, may overlap into the business
expatriate category but cannot be confused as a ‘best example’ of the business
expatriate prototype. Prototype membership for international business travellers is low,
while for some commuters can be much higher.
We also note the practical issue of fungibility: people will move between and
across the boundaries of each category in Figure 1. Thus, a business expatriate may
move permanently to another country, becoming a migrant; a migrant may find that
things do not work out in their new country, or that a crucial problem in their prior
home-country (e.g., civil war) is now resolved, so they go back to their country of origin
after a short time. International business trips may get extended into formal short-term
assignments and/or become long-term international assignments. While establishing
the boundary conditions is vital to our academic analysis, we acknowledge that real life
may not respect the boundaries.
Tying It All Together: Logical Consistency of Our Theorising
How can we use our conceptualisation of business expatriates, and the distinction from
other forms of international experience, to advance research and practice? There are
important implications for research arising from the application of a clearer definition
of the business expatriate concept. First, by distinguishing the concept of business
expatriates from other international experiences on the basis of four boundary

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conditions, researchers will be able to clarify in the research design of their studies
whether the unit of analysis is business expatriates. Correspondingly, when business
expatriates are not studied, researchers should now be able to demonstrate greater
conceptual clarity about who and what the unit of analysis actually is. Being clearer
about the boundary conditions will allow for better understanding and greater
comparability of research in the IHRM field of expatriate studies because both construct
clarity (definitions) and construct validity (measures) are improved.
Second, application of prototype theory illustrates that while business expatriates
are prototypical, there are other categories that are sometimes included in expatriate
research and sometimes left out, making comparison impossible. Even within the
prototypical group there are sub-types that have different motivations to expatriate, and
different views of success criteria, career ambitions and orientations, which will impact
on the construct validity of a particular study to the extent that these differences can be
accounted for in the research design, analysis, and overall findings. This is best
illustrated using examples that we see as having specific problems. Consider, for
instance, a study that attempts to examine the correlation between expatriate
interaction with host-country nationals (HCNs) and expatriate effectiveness but which
fails to clarify what kind of business expatriate it is addressing: different types of
business expatriates (e.g., SIEs) might well be more or less likely to utilize HCN
interaction thus confounding the results. Another example is studies about knowledge
transfer where it may be posited that cultural differences (among other variables) can
increase the difficulty for expatriates to transfer intra-organizational knowledge to
subsidiaries: the implicit assumption is that ‘expatriates’ refers to PCNs, but the
problem might look different if the study were to include or separate out TCNs from
similar culture, bi-cultural or locally-hired SIEs, where cultural distance effects such

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"
as failure to adjust, homesickness, or clinical depression would be considerably
reduced. Our point is that future studies of expatriates need to account for and report
the types of business expatriates that are included (or excluded) in a study (i.e.,
accounting for variability, or lack thereof in the research design) to ensure higher levels
of construct clarity and to improve construct validity (measures), thereby allowing
proper comparison of results. The ideas proceeding from a clear construct such as
proposed above offer the opportunity for researchers to develop more nuanced
approaches to expatriation in the future.
CONCLUSIONS
Despite the enormous empirical literature on expatriates, our study represents a rare
attempt to use construct clarity to address how business expatriates are defined and how
the concept relates to other concepts of international experiences. Given the largely a-
theoretical nature of expatriation studies, it is important for our field of research, and
by implication for practice, that we develop construct clarity using well-established
theoretical lenses that have been applied in other fields for many years. Our
conceptualization of the meanings of the term ‘business expatriate’ makes a number of
contributions to the field of expatriate studies. First, despite the complexity of its
evolution, the field has not yet fully ‘connected the dots’ in terms of clearly defining
business expatriates and linking their employment to global staffing research and
practice. Instead, scholars have been preoccupied with clarifying smaller elements of
the topic or deciding where expatriates stand in relation to other categories. Our
contribution lies in taking one step further back than these attempts - studying the
concept of expatriates at its historical core - from which to then move forward with
greater clarity and less ambiguity about who it is that we claim to study when we use

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"
the word ‘expatriate’. Second, in getting back to basics, we enhance scholars’ ability to
engage in more innovative and theoretically grounded research about business
expatriates and the global staffing opportunities they present to MNEs by
conceptualizing the boundary conditions under which the term ‘business expatriate’ can
and cannot be applied. Third, to stimulate a more critical dialogue about business
expatriates, we have presented arguments that build on historical understandings of
expatriates in general, illustrating through examples of prior studies and using early and
recent empirical evidence to introduce ideas for new theorizing about this important
concept in business and management research. In doing so, we follow on from others
(e.g., Kostova, Roth, & Dacin, 2008) in stating that our goal is not modest, but
nonetheless an important first step to extend construct development and broaden
theorizing about expatriates. The intent of this article has been to be deliberately
provocative, by raising questions and starting a necessary debate among scholars in our
field as to the meaning(s) of the business expatriate prototype and the boundary
conditions under which we can speak of, and study, them.
"

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Table 1. Twenty-five most cited articles relating to expatriates or expatriation from Web of Science and Scopus1!
Article (in alphabetical order)
Publication
Definition Provided?
(1) Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer & Luk,
2005
Academy of Management Journal
No definition
(2) Black, 1988
Journal of International Business Studies
No definition
(3) Black & Gregersen, 1991
International Journal of Intercultural Relations
No definition
(4) Black & Mendenhall, 1991
Journal of International Business Studies
No definition
(5) Black & Stephens, 1989
Journal of Management
No definition
(6) Boyacigiller, 1987
Journal of International Business Studies
No definition
(7) Caligiuri, 2000
Personnel Psychology
No definition
(8) Caligiuri, Hyland, Joshi & Bross, 1998
Journal of Applied Psychology
No definition
(9) Caligiuri, Phillips, Lazarova, Tarique & Burgi,
2001
The International Journal of Human Resource
Management
No definition
(10) Collings, Scullion & Morley, 2007
Journal of World Business
No definition
(11) Deshpande & Viswesvaran, 1992
International Journal of Intercultural Relations
No definition
(12) Feldman & Thomas, 1992
Journal of International Business Studies
No definition
(13) Guzzo, Noonan & Elron, 1994
Journal of Applied Psychology
No definition
(14) Harzing, 2001
Journal of World Business
No definition
(15) Inkson, Arthur, Pringle & Barry 1997
Journal of World Business
Some terms implied: company initiative,
moves within company, assigned on
temporary basis, returns to same firm in
home country
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 Combined lists from Web of Science and Scopus using the search term expat*.

(16) Jokinen, Brewster & Suutari, 2008
The International Journal of Human Resource
Management
No definition
(17) Kraimer, Wayne & Jaworski, 2001
Personnel Psychology
No definition
(18) Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985
Academy of Management Review
No definition
(19) Shaffer & Harrison, 1998
Personnel Psychology
No definition
(20) Shaffer, Harrison & Gilley, 1999
Journal of International Business Studies
No definition
(21) Shaffer, Harrison, Black, Gregersen & Ferzandi,
2006
Journal of Applied Psychology
No definition
(22) Stahl, Miller & Tung, 2002
Journal of World Business
No definition
(23) Suutari & Brewster, 2000
Journal of World Business
“An employer sends an individual outside
their home country for a temporary
assignment”
(24) Takeuchi, Yun & Tesluk, 2002
Journal of Applied Psychology
No definition
(25) Tung, 1998
Journal of World Business
No definition
Note: Full citations appear in the reference list annotated with *!

Table 2. Prototype boundary conditions for business expatriates, with related concepts!
Prototype Boundary Conditions
Abroad
Employed
work
Temporary
stay
Non-
citizen
Legal
compliance
required1
Met
Prototype: Business expatriate
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
4
AE
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
4
SIE
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
4
IBT & commuter
✔
✔
✗
✔
✗
2
Sojourner, student & retiree
✔
✗3
----
-----
----
0
OE traveller & tourist
✔
✗3
----
-----
----
0
Migrant
✔
✔
✗
✗
✗
1
Virtual worker & global domestic
✗2
----
----
-----
----
0
1Legal compliance required based on their being a foreigner in the country.!!
2Do not work abroad, negates boundary conditions.!
3Do not possess ‘employed work’ attribute, negates other boundary conditions. !

!
Figure 1. Prototype Model of Business Expatriates
!
!
Note: Numbers denote attributes posssessed by the concept (4=all jointly sufficient attributes, 0=no jointly
sufficient attributes). Concepts that possess four (4) jointly sufficient attributes qualify as prototypical ‘best
examples’ of business expatriates, compared to other concepts that do not qualify but which are vaguely (3) (2),
generally (1) or opaquely (1) related versus not related (0).

Legend
Boundary conditions:
(1) organizationally employed
(2) originally planned temporary stay
(3) non-citizenship of host-country
(4) regulatory cross-border (legal) compliance for residency/work permit necessitated by organizational
employment and non-citizenship
Assigned expatriates (PCNs, TCNs, Inpatriates, EHCOs, STAs): Possess attributes (1) (2) (3) (4)
SIEs (LOPATs, PTs, FELOs): Possess attributes (1) (2) (3) (4)
IBTs & commuters: Do not possess attributes (2) (4)
Sojourners, students and retirees: Do not possess attribute (1), negates (2) (3) (4)
Migrants (skilled and unskilled incl. refugees): Do not possess attributes (2) (3) (4)
Virtual workers and global domestics: Do not go abroad, negates attributes (1) (2) (3) (4)
OE travellers and tourists: Do not possess attribute (1), negates (2) (3) (4)
!