Background: Europe has gained an extra amount of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) during recent years, blurring the current and future state of global mobility. The scarce literature regarding the influence of the turbulent and interconnected external environment in the field of global mobility, particularly in the Western world, highlights the importance of examining the current environment and how it influences the perceptions of global professionals carrying vital implications for organizations and their global strategies. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to contribute to the field of global mobility by creating a holistic view of the current and future state of international assignments. We aim to unveil the implications the interconnected external environment, utilizing the VUCA framework, has on global mobility through the perspective of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). Method: We conducted an inductive qualitative multi-case study rooted in social constructionism and relativistic perspective to ensure catching the subjective experiences and viewpoints of SIEs. We conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with SIEs who were currently on an international assignment in Germany and who, through purposive sampling, fulfilled strict boundary conditions. We analyzed the data using a thematic analysis approach to derive deeper meaning and construct rich empirical findings. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the interconnectedness of SIEs’ strong intrinsic motivation together with personal factors, international assignment environment, and available support mechanisms influence their perceptions of international assignments in the surrounding VUCA environment. Perceived stress caused by the VUCA environment as well as the decision-making regarding international assignments are additionally interdependent with the above factors. Accordingly, this enabled us to derive the current and future status of international assignments in the turbulent VUCA world.

China is growing as an economic power leading to more and more foreign organizations taking the opportunity of its future potential and hence opening up their subsidies there. Companies nowadays, have several options when it comes to what type of workforce they should recruit. Self-Initiated Expatriates (SIEs) are a growing group in the international workforce who goes to work in another country on their own initiative as compared to the traditional expatriates that are sent by companies. Our literature research indicated that SIEs are perceived as a group of people who lack organizational commitment and tend to switch jobs often, which makes organizations reluctant to employ and invest in them.Inspired by this, we have a performed a study, which investigated SIEs’ experiences in China. The purpose of the study was to develop recommendations for organizations on how to better leverage SIEs as human resource. To fulfill the purpose of our thesis, we conducted a qualitative study, where we interviewed ten Westerners who currently had a job or previously had been employed in China. Our empirical findings revealed that SIEs perceive themselves as developing better cross-cultural skills and improving their language proficiency more than traditional expatriates as well as being much cheaper to employ. They do however need challenges, freedom and career development possibilities in order to stay satisfied. The failure to provide these from the company side results in them quitting their job or if the costs of quitting are too high, they stay on but performing only what they absolutely have to. As for the existing definitions, we found that a definition that only includes individuals with clear plans of return is not suitable since some SIEs have a “for now” mindset and only considering SIEs who intend to leave in the near future might lead to an overrepresentation of “failed” SIEs in the population. A more suitable definition should allow for less definite plans for staying in the host country.

Globalization in the past few decades has been marked by increased mobility of highly skilled workers from one country to another. Even though self-initiated expatriation is a widespread phenomenon, it is a relatively under-researched phenomenon in the academic literature, especially in an organizational context. Existing literature shows that not all individuals are equally suited to embark on a new life in another country, and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) could be particularly susceptible to failure since they have no support from a home organization. This study was designed to investigate the experiences of self-initiated professional expatriates and the effect it had on their work performance. The purpose was to understand how their organizational and social experience affected their cross-cultural adjustment process and in turn affected their individual work performance. The researcher used a qualitative method using semi-structured interviews, observations, and documents with ten self-initiated expatriates. This study contributed to the expanding literature on the experiences of self-initiated expatriates, specifically how different support systems affected cross-cultural adjustment and individual work performance.

Les missions internationales en entreprise ne parviennent plus à retenir les talents alors même que leur coût reste très élevé. La délocalisation de l’individu apparaît donc comme une nouvelle forme d'expatriation à mi-chemin entre expatriation auto-initiée et mission internationale en entreprise. Cependant, celle-ci résonne comme une violation du contrat psychologique liant l’individu à son entreprise. En effet, le diplôme ne semble plus protéger l’employé contre la délocalisation de son poste vers des pays à coût plus bas. Cette étude de cas a aidé à identifier les facteurs influençant les talents à accepter une relocalisation sous contrat local dans un pays à moindre coût. De ce fait, cette thèse fournit aux entreprises des éléments contributifs à la gestion globale des talents dans un contexte de délocalisation. / Individual offshoring emerges as a new form of organizational-initiated expatriation which bridges self-initiated-expatriation and international assignment. The failure of IA to retain talented individuals (talent) and a growing pressure on costs leave no choice to companies but to dramatically reconsider how expatriation can develop talent globally in a different but still sustainable way.However, this new form of expatriation resonates as a breach of the psychological contract. If talent no longer expect to remain in the same company for a large part of their career, they still hold an expectation that white collar activities associated to higher degrees would protect their jobs from moving abroad. This thesis was a case study of a company offshoring some of its global talent to lower cost locations. The purpose was to understand what factors talent consider in accepting to relocate to a lower cost location under a local contract. This research contributes to talent retention and sustained talent management while offshoring ac-tivities to lower cost countries.

The researcher of this study " Indian Migrants and Self-Initiated Expatriates in the host Countries: the Focus on Social Support" the whole study about the Indian expatriates who are living in the United Kingdom and the main goal of this research is to predict how successful the Indian expatriates in their settling process in the UK and the focus of social supports. The sample includes both Self-initiated expatriates ( SIE's) and Assigned Expatriates(AE's). SIE's expatriates are Indian students who are studying in the UK and the AE's expatriates are the company assigned Indian full-time employees. Social support includes briefly the overall host country support provided for Indian expatriates in the host country. Social support is measured in three broader dimensions pertinent to Waxin cross-cultural adjustment model (2006), likely perceived organizational support, individual self-motivation, and contextual support, includes family support and host country environment. (Navas et al, 2005) classified six relevant contexts of acculturation of expatriates in a foreign country, which emphasize, politics and government, organizational work-related adjustments, economic perspective, family relations; social relations and ideology, which includes religious belief and customs. The structure of the thesis covers extensive theoretical part based on the intense review of literature in the field of expatriation, cross-cultural studies, information on this context about the United Kingdom and India and final part includes practical data analysis, business cases and recommendation for the future research.