Taking stock of expatriates’ career success after international assignments: A review and future research agenda

This systematic literature review explores studies addressing the objective career success and subjective career success of company-assigned and self-initiated expatriates after their long-term international assignments. Expatriate work is defined as high-density work that affects employee learning and career trajectories. We develop a holistic expatriate career success framework exploring the following questions: 1) What individual career impact results from international assignments? 2) What are the antecedents of such career success? and 3) What are the outcomes of assignees’ career success? A previously neglected range of theoretical perspectives, antecedents, and outcomes of expatriate career success is identified. Subsequently, a threefold contribution is made. First, we extend the conceptualization of international work density to unveil the differences between general and global career concepts. Second, we identify promising theories that have not been utilized in expatriation research, emphasizing context-related and learning theories that chime with the specific nature of global careers. Lastly, we suggest an extensive future research agenda. • Despite the "dark side" of international careers, overall, studies reported positive impacts of IA on expatriates' careers. • High-density work increases expatriates’ career capital, and such development is linked with the perception of career success. • Underutilized theories are identified to offer new future research possibilities when assessing expatriates’ career success. • Institutional and learning theories are critical theories to identify the antecedents of expatriates' career success. • Outcomes that follow career success are identified, e.g., career success after IA may lead expatriates to have global careers workers to re-expatriate: they might become global careerists.