Individual PhD Projects

All individual projects will have a duration of 36 months and the early stage researcher (ESR) will be enrolled as PhD student at the host institution. All PhD projects are empirical projects.

Work Package 1: Micro - Creating expatriates’ individual resources and capacities

ESR 1 - Creating motivation (Host: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)/typo3/
ESR 1 will be concerned with the examination of reasons behind individual willingness to move internationally.

ESR 2 - Creating career capital and employability: Self-Initiated repatriation, from 'over the moon' to the 'dark side of the moon' (Host: Cranfield University)
ESR 2 will be concerned with individuals' perception of career capital impact, career patterns and work-life satisfaction as well as self-initiated repatriates' identity, their career-relevant networks and their use of (foreign-acquired) career capital.

ESR 3 - Creating well-being among employees on international assignments (Host: University of Vaasa)
ESR 3 will examine ill-health and motivational processes among expatriates and their impact on performance as well as the role of work-life conflict (WLC) and enrichment (WLE) among expatriates.

ESR 4 - Creating career success: Long-term career impacts of different types of international work experiences (Host: University of Vaasa)
ESR 4 will analyse the longer-term career impacts of international work experiences among different types of international professionals, the development during international work experiences using career capital theory as well as their impacts on future career choices

ESR 5 - Creating identity: A narrative approach (Host: Copenhagen Business School)
ESR 5 will explore international assignees sense making of their global careers, and identify the type of narratives they construct when speaking about their global careers in two defined organisational and institutional settings.

Work Package 2: Meso - Managing organisational structures influencing international careers and mobility

ESR 6 - Managing and recognizing social capital (Host: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
ESR 6 will develop a theory of internationals' social capital investigating the diversity of weak ties, applying a cross-cultural perspective on the ties' strength, and a cross-cultural perspective on the function and value of social capital (original contribution) within organisations.

ESR 7 - Managing global compensation and rewards (Host: Airbus SAS)
ESR 7 will develop an understanding of the importance of the various logics of personnel administration and pay roll systems in various European countries and cultural context configurations with the use of SAP. Contrasting patterns of influences and development of mobility barriers due to payroll system differences in Europe and beyond will be compared, leading to a conceptualization of a possible European harmonisation of SAP payroll systems in order to facilitate European and global mobility, transnational leaves as well as European mindset development for supportive accounting practice.

ESR 8 - Managing diversity in careers: A comparative study of Self-Initiated Expatriation and Local-Plus Expatriation as an organisational practice (Host: Toulouse Business School)
ESR 8 will develop an understanding of the dynamics of self-initiated expatriates (SIE) and local-plus expatriates as an organisational practice by comparing different SIE groups in terms of their career capital accumulation and possible corporate use of such a diversity.

ESR 9 - Managing retention via job embeddedness (Host: University of Bamberg)
ESR 9 will investigate determinants why foreign employees leave a host country and why they stay abroad.

ESR 10 - Managing language perspectives on an international career: A study in MNCs with English as corporate language (Host: Copenhagen Business School)
ESR 10 will analyse and identify the challenges different kinds of international assignees encounter regarding sense making and language in an unfamiliar organisational context.

ESR 11 - Implications of national hostility (Host: Cranfield University)
ESR 11 will explore different forms and degrees of hostile environments in various contexts, including high levels of migration, degrees of threat and insecurity.

Work Package 3: Macro – Implications of societal factors and systems affecting international careers and mobility

ESR 12 - Implications of educational system: The Bologna process and global mobility of human capital (Host: Institute for Employment Research)
ESR 12 will investigate whether the Bologna process (European Higher Education Area) has contributed to an increase in global mobility of both human capital and human capital investments and will examine whether the adaptation of university systems within Europe has led to higher mobility of students.

ESR 13 - Implications of gender-specific policies (Host: Institute for Employment Research)
ESR 13 will investigate the gender-specific determinants of migrants' human capital investments in host and sending countries and the causes of the differences in labour market performance and career patterns between female and male migrants in detail (participation, unemployment, wages).

ESR 14 - Implications of career systems for internationally mobile employees' employability (Host: University of Bamberg)
ESR 14 will determine the career norms of selected career (sub-)fields that determine (a) their employability and (re-)entry success of internationally mobile employees and (b) their subsequent career development in organisations. Potential differences between career subfields will be explored and the diffusion of career norms in MNCs will be determined.

ESR 15 - Implications of political systems (Host: University of Bamberg)
ESR 15 will examine the extent to which macro-level tendencies towards the professionalisation of political campaigning in European democracies affect the chances of candidates of immigrant origin to get nominated by political parties and elected by voters and affect collective sense making. By doing so, the extent to which general tendencies towards the professionalisation of politics as a 'career' affects the recruitment and career opportunities of first-generation immigrants in the politics of European democracies will be analysed.