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Managerial Willingness to Assume Traveling, Short-term and Long-term Global Assignments

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Abstract

  • Drawing on reasoned action and family systems theories, as well as the domestic and international job transfer and relocation, global assignments, personality and work-life balance research domains, this study examines managers’ willingness to assume global assignments.

  • We propose a multi-factor model and test several hypotheses using survey data collected from 431 global managers and 162 spouses/significant others that examine the degree to which individual, family, and organizational variables influence managerial willingness to accept not only the more traditional multi-year, but also the increasingly common traveling and short-term global assignments.

  • Results suggest that individual (adventurousness and destination country), family (eldercare, children at home, community tenure, and spouse/significant other relocation willingness), and organizational (compensatory rewards/benefits and career fit) factors influence managerial willingness to assume global assignments.

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Notes

  1. In response to one of the reviewer’s suggestions to test the logic of the current model’s variable ordering, the authors conducted regression analyses on all other possible variable orderings (i.e., all variables entered at once, family-individual-organizational, family-organizational-individual, organizational-family-individual, and organizational-individual-family). There were no notable differences in the results of these alternative models.

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Acknowledgements:

We want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their many insightful and constructive suggestions which have helped us to improve the paper substantially. Their commitment and assistance are very much appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Texas State University San Marcos, Texas, USA

    Robert Konopaske

  2. School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada

    Chet Robie

  3. C.T. Bauer Collage of Business, University of Houston, Houston, USA

    John M. Ivancevich

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  1. Robert Konopaske
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  2. Chet Robie
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  3. John M. Ivancevich
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Correspondence to Robert Konopaske.

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Konopaske, R., Robie, C. & Ivancevich, J. Managerial Willingness to Assume Traveling, Short-term and Long-term Global Assignments. Manag Int Rev 49, 359–387 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-009-0147-8

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