The Independent Expatriate: Academics Abroad: A Study of Expatriate Academics in New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey

Citation

Schoepp, K. (2010), "The Independent Expatriate: Academics Abroad: A Study of Expatriate Academics in New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey", Personnel Review, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 525-527. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011045452

With the release of The Independent Expatriate: Academics Abroad, Julia Richardson has clearly established herself as the leading researcher investigating expatriate academics, if not the wider field of expatriation from an experiential perspective. As she has been an expatriate in a number of countries, her personal connection to the topic is obvious and one she shares as a main driver behind this book. Her own lived experience and discussions with other expatriate academics have provided her with a unique perspective from which to pursue this topic and realize the gap in the literature, which this book ably fills. Richardson reflected that although there is an extensive body of expatriate management literature, there is very little which reflected the richness of her own experiences or the experiences of other expatriates. She sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the experience of expatriation through a personal rather than organizational focus, as is most often the case.

The book examines the experiences of a group of British expatriate academics that are working in Turkey, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and New Zealand. It does this from an interpretive interactionist perspective using a qualitative methodology namely in‐depth interviews. Although I was quite engaged with the contents, the style adopted was very academic, and I felt that more could have been done with the prose to make it more accessible to those beyond the academic realm. At times it is fairly dense in nature, and I believe that some readers may be turned off and unable to benefit from the rich analyses that are contained within. Given these boundaries, the book is probably of limited efficacy for most expatriates or those considering positions abroad. The intended audiences are IHRM professionals, academic researchers, as well as the unique subset of the expatriate academic.

An initial concern I had for this book was that the focus on the independent expatriate academic would mean that it was too narrow in its focus to be of much interest beyond researchers investigating this area. I was particularly concerned that the unique nature of the academic, in that they may hold more of a commitment to their field than to their institution, and that there exists certain expectations towards a career in academia such as degree of autonomy, collegial decision‐making, and academic freedom makes research into this subset rather limiting. This concern, however, was unfounded once the personal experiences of expatriates began to emerge throughout the pages of the book. The focal point of study was clearly on the experience of expatriation and not the academic.

Richardson has divided the book into nine chapters. The first chapter introduces the topic of expatriation and examines the more targeted theme of international mobility amongst academics. It then goes onto offer the motivations behind writing the book and also its aims. It was within this initial chapter that I first feared that the focus on the academic might be too narrow.

The second and third chapters contain the literature reviews, which inform the research. Chapter two is focused on the existing body of expatriate literature and is as thorough a review of the topic as one will find. This literature has mainly focused on executives and managers who have been assigned to positions abroad by their employer, while much less is known about the independent expatriate or those outside of the business realm. Moreover, this research has often been conducted from an organizational perspective and adopts a positivist approach, which utilizes quantitative methodologies. Richardson's research proceeds to offer an alternative approach to this existing body of knowledge. It is also within this chapter that Osland's (1995) work and the metaphor of the hero's adventure is first described and analyzed. Osland's work was the most influential for the author and one she continually references throughout. She shared how upon first discovering this book she “was struck how close it came to conveying my own experiences and the questions I had about expatriation” (Osland, 1995, p. 23). The literature reviewed in chapter three in centered on additional themes such as careers, sense making, and learning that emerged via the interviews.

The research questions are set out in the fourth chapter after interpretive interactionism, the theoretical framework of the book, is discussed. This is logically followed by details of the research process, methodology, analysis, and issues surrounding the reliability and validity of the work in chapter five. These are two chapters that probably limit the potential audience of the book as they are quite academic in nature.

The research findings are presented in chapters six, seven, and eight. It is within these chapters that the book excels because of the insightful emic perspective that is presented. One of the ways in which this was accomplished was that a large number of quotes were utilized so that the reader could hear the participants' voices, and evaluate the validity of the analysis for themselves. Chapter six focuses on the decision to expatriate and builds upon the idea that this is a pro‐active, individually‐centered process. Chapter seven answers the questions related to experiencing expatriation with specific questions aimed at the role of the family and the relationship between the home and host countries. It is here the Black and Gregersen's (1992) model of expatriate organizational allegiance is successfully applied to the expatriates' allegiance to home and host country. The eighth chapter centers on the evaluation of the expatriate experience and offers rich evidence for the continued move away from the success/failure dichotomy that often permeates expatriate management literature. It makes clear that, especially when an evaluation is done from the perspective of the individual, this dichotomy is inappropriate. A major strength of these chapters is the graphical representations or node trees that were created to demonstrate the emergent themes and the relationships between them. The vast amount of data presented was made much more digestible because of these figures.

Chapter nine brings together the findings from chapters six, seven, and eight as well as connecting this with the existing body of expatriate literature. From this synthesis, the theoretical framework that is put forth as the model for experiencing expatriation is the highlight of the chapter. It is representative of the study's findings, clearly illustrates the experience of these expatriate academics, and offers as a “loose framework” (p. 219) from which to build further understandings of expatriate experience. As with research papers, this chapter concludes with a limitations section and proposes areas for future research.

As a novice scholar who has lived and continues to live as an expatriate academic, and as someone researching this same topic, I was quite keen to read and review this book, not only for its scholarly contribution but also to see how its findings mirrored, or did not mirror, my own experiences of expatriation. In both of these instances The Independent Expatriate: Academics Abroad was insightful. The book is clearly the most comprehensive text written on the topic of the independent expatriate, and of self‐initiated expatriate academics in particular.

Given the international nature of publishing and of the topic itself, there is of course some degree of price fluctuation for this book. However, the book appears to average around $US120, which I believe makes it a fairly expensive proposition. This is not a slight on the quality of the text, it simply gave me a moment of pause before I made the purchase. Having now read and reviewed the book, I do consider it to be of good value. Its comprehensiveness in detailing the experience of expatriation makes it more than worthwhile. Ultimately, The Independent Expatriate: Academics Abroad makes a substantial contribution to the literature by offering a richer understanding of the expatriate experience and by contributing towards the development of a theoretically grounded knowledge of this topic.