Qualitative Research in the Management Field: Expatriate Return on Investment in Global Firms

Abstract

This research project is about expatriate return on investment in global firms—how it is defined and measured, what barriers exist to prevent it from being measured, and the factors that cause expatriate return on investment to increase and decrease. Two perspectives on expatriate return on investment were sought: the views of mobility managers as representatives of their firms (organizational perspective) and the views of expatriate employees (individual perspective). At the time of the research, very little was known about expatriate return on investment and knowledge about the topic was still in its infancy. Even less had been published on the topic, academically or among practitioners. I nonetheless knew it was an important topic to study because when I was undertaking my doctoral degree, I was also living and working as an expatriate in the United States and Singapore, and expatriate return on investment was a relatively new, albeit hot topic everyone was talking about. So, while this state of affairs led to many challenges in conducting the research itself, it also resulted in many opportunities in terms of publishing and consulting opportunities for myself and others involved once the project was completed. To set the stage for how the research was conducted, the methodological challenges that I faced, how I addressed and overcame those challenges, and the opportunities that were subsequently presented to the research team arising from the project's findings, let's first go back to the beginning and explain what I did and why.

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