Investigating the Phenomenon of Expatriation

In the recent years, the international market’s orientation towards the developing countries that offer low installation, operation and production cost has affected Greek executives mobility. Greek employees are now offered such employment possibilities abroad as those offered to Western executives 20 years ago. Besides the high demand, another significant reason that may push future executives to expatriation is the home country’s economic concurrence. This resulted in executives wage cuts and employment rise. The above reasons may motivate future executives to look for a job overseas.  

 Most studies on expatriates refer to executives coming from Western Europe or North America. Therefore, the question is whether the conclusions of these studies apply to the Greek reality. The difficulty in adopting them lies on the fact that the Greek culture is different from the one of these countries. Motivated by this lack of findings, the current research shall try to investigate whether the ancient expression «Every one not a Greek is a barbarian» which was used to denote one of another nation corresponds to the future executives or whether they consider themselves citizens of the world and think that the labor market is the world. Specifically, it will determine the level of interest in international career of the next generation managers as well as the reasons for accepting or turning it down. In addition, it shall investigate the impact of personal background factors (such as gender, international exposure, cultural acceptance, travel orientation, family relationship and language acceptance) to MBA students’ intention to become expats. Moreover, it shall also explore the effects of personality characteristics on Greeks’ willingness to accept an expat assignment.