A Job Demands-Resources Perspective of Global Work

Global employment experiences encompass a wide range of resources, processes, and consequences. To date, adjustment and related issues (e.g., selection and training) have dominated the expatriate literature, with little emphasis placed on understanding the requirements of global employment and the processes whereby global employees acquire global competencies. This presenter symposium brings together a set of papers from researchers around the world to help us move beyond the emphasis on adjustment and gain a more comprehensive understanding of global employment experiences. We begin by developing a conceptual framework of global work requirements as it relates to employees's well-being and global career competencies. We then disentangle the black box for transferring knowledge between expatriates and host country nationals. We also explore the role of global experiences on top management team creativity in multinational organizations. Next, we examine the motivational process for self- initiated expatriates in establishing global work experiences. Finally, we consider how fundamental assumptions of sojourners influence their adjustment and ultimately their cultural competencies. The presenters consider these issues from various theoretical perspectives: job demands and resources model, social capital theory, self-determination theory, transactional theory of stress, and essentialism perspective. The set of papers together provide a much needed exploration of processes and competencies as they relate to global employment experiences. We conclude our symposium with suggestions for future research on global competencies that are relevant across a broad spectrum of global employees and which can set the stage for future research on this timely topic.