Managing Talent of Self-initiated Expatriates: A neglected source of the global talent flow

There has been a lot of “buzz” about managing expatriates.  When we say “expatriates”, we almost always mean people who are sent by their companies abroad to fulfill some kind of mission in the host environment.  The labor trends, however, show that there are more and more people going abroad by themselves to look for jobs in international companies.  Some of these people are being “pushed” by their home environment – no jobs at home, hostile atmosphere, etc.  These folks are outside of our scope of interest.  Some other people are being “pulled” by other countries – looking for better job opportunities, seeking challenges, career growth opportunities, etc.  These people are referred to as “Self-initiated Expatriates”, and normally, they are very well-educated, knowledgeable, skilled, motivated, and highly employable.  These SIEs have absolutely specific needs, wants, and drives – different from those of either domestic employees or regular expatriates.  Therefore, companies must develop some special techniques that would help them manage these SIEs and ensure that they stay with the company in the long-run.  So, we thought that it would be interesting to explore various strategies for managing talent of these expatriates and to title the book “Managing Talent of Self-initiated Expatriates: A neglected source of the global talent flow” to reflect on our intentions.

At this point, my fellow co-editor Arno Haslberger and I would like to begin with some sort of market research and ask those of you working in this area to inform me about your possible interest in contributing to our book.

One-two page chapter proposals will be due on September 1, while the first draft of the chapter on January 1, 2012.

As a preliminary consideration, we are thinking of making this publication suitable to both academics involved in teaching, consulting, and executive education, and practitioners who want to use talent management techniques developed by leading scholars in this area of knowledge. Please feel free to share any of your own ideas that you might have in regards to this upcoming book.

Contact information:
Vlad Vaiman
vlad@ru.is