The International Journal of Human Resource

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ISSN: 0958-5192 (Print) 1466-4399 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rijh20

Repatriation and short-term assignments: an

exploration into expectations, change and
dilemmas

Tina L. Starr

To cite this article: Tina L. Starr (2009) Repatriation and short-term assignments: an
exploration into expectations, change and dilemmas, The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 20:2, 286-300, DOI: 10.1080/09585190802670557

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Published online: 25 Feb 2009.

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The International Journal of Human Resource Management,
Vol. 20, No. 2, February 2009, 286–300

Repatriation and short-term assignments: an exploration

into expectations, change and dilemmas
Tina L. Starr*

Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham, UK

The aim of this research was to use in-depth interviews and discourse analysis to explore
talk about repatriation expectations by 22 participants who were currently on, or had
recently completed a short-term assignment within a single MNC. This study is one of
the first to focus specifically on repatriation connected to short-term assignments and
present findings that stem solely from the expatriates’ perspective. Through discourse
analysis, this paper outlines a framework with which to understand the relevance and
meaning of individual change associated with career-based expectations of repatriation.
For some of the participants, expectations of short-term assignment repatriation meant a
desired change in work based on perceptions of themselves as changed as a result of
their experience. For others, expectations of consistency as opposed to change between
pre-and post-assignment work roles emerged through discourses of resistance. These
findings raise a number of distinctively novel HR challenges.
Keywords: career; change and identity; discourse analysis; repatriation; short-term
assignment

Introduction
Although long-term assignments continue to receive the bulk of research attention within
the International Human Resource Management (IHRM) literature, global staffing
operations over time within many MNCs have undergone immense changes in order to
remain successful in today’s world markets (Collings, Scullion and Morley 2007).
Particularly evident has been the increased utilization of alternative forms of international
working in addition to traditional long-term assignments including international business
travellers (IBT’s) (Welch and Worm 2006; Welch, Welch and Worm 2007), ‘flexpatriates’
(Mayerhofer, Hartmann, Michelitsch-Riedl and Kollinger 2004), and short-term
assignments (i.e. less than 1 year) (Tahvanainen, Welch and Worm 2005).
Although the latter assignment category has always existed, recent survey figures show
that 70% of all assignments are now less than one year in duration and 65% of companies
use them as an alternative to long-term assignments (GMAC 2004). This is not surprising
given that short-term assignments are seen as a panacea for avoiding several
repatriation/career issues resulting from long-term assignments (Frazee 1997; Solomon
1999; Brewster, Harris and Petrovic 2001). However, repatriation in this context has
received very little research attention. Indeed, with few exceptions, most studies have
derived primarily from an organizational perspective based on survey evidence (Brewster
et al. 2001) and interviews with HR professionals (Tahvanainen et al. 2005) where

*Email: tina.howell@nottingham.ac.uk

ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online

q 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09585190802670557
http://www.informaworld.com
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 287

repatriation was deemed a non-issue or ‘mostly unproblematic’. Given the lack of studies
from the expatriates’ perspectives, there is a need to explore how individuals themselves
view repatriation and the meanings they apply to their experiences, in order to identify
what issues are the most relevant for them. The aim of this paper is to redress the balance
by utilizing in-depth interviews and discourse analysis to explore analytically talk about
repatriation expectations by 22 participants who were currently on, or had recently
completed, a short-term assignment within a single MNC. The specific focus of the study
is concerned with discourses of change or alternatively, the lack of change emerging as a
key feature in the participants’ talk about themselves and used to construct individualized
expectations about repatriation and career outcomes (Peltonen 1997). Although discursive
approaches to research akin to this are not new to the long-term assignment literature and
are a valuable means of highlighting specific repatriation expectations, and talk about
career-related issues and change (e.g. Peltonen 1997, 1998, 1999; Glanz 2003; Kohonen
2004, 2005; Bossard and Peterson 2005), this paper is one of the first to use to discourse
analysis to shed light on similar issues associated with short-term assignment repatriation,
and also has significant HR implications.
The arguments of this paper are structured as follows. First, an overview of how
‘traditional’ repatriation, change and identity compares to assumptions about repatriation
and short-term assignments will be considered. The rationale for employing discourse
analysis in this study to explore identity-based talk about change and repatriation
associated with short-term assignments is explained. An in-depth overview of the case-
study organization and participants is provided, and the methods used for data collection
and analysis are introduced. The third section presents the discursive analysis of two
opposing but related themes that concern change and repatriation expectations about
work. The fourth section will discuss the analysis and relate the findings to the extant
literature. The final section draws some brief conclusions.

Repatriation and change

In the main, repatriation associated with long-term assignment undertaking has been a
well-documented topic within the IHRM literature (e.g. Feldman and Thomas 1992; Stroh,
Gregersen and Black 1998, 2000; Glanz 2003). Much attention has focused on repatriation
and work adjustment consequential to changing jobs, countries and cultures, and the
subsequent need to then readjust back into the ‘home’ organization upon return (Black
1988). A significant issue surrounding this is the development of repatriation expectations
and concerns about post-assignment jobs and future work roles. Many of these constitute
organizational ‘norms’ because they are ostensibly set by the experiences of other
returning expatriates (Stroh et al. 2000; Bonache 2005). Notably they have included taken-
for-granted career-based expectations of promotion and high-level job opportunities
(Black and Gregersen 1992; Stroh 1995; Hofbauer and Fischlmayr 2004) as well as less
desirable expectations such as the ‘out of sight out of mind’ syndrome associated with
having been forgotten by home-based employers (Forster 1994; Allen and Alvarez 1998;
Linehan and Scullion 2002; Bossard and Peterson 2005; Harvey and Novicevic 2006) and
the ad hoc creation of interim jobs in lieu of available or suitable positions (Stroh et al.
1998, 2000; Collings and Scullion 2006).
A major concern is that repatriation as a process of change or ‘re-adjustment in
reverse’ is often more disconcerting for returning expatriates than their actual assignment
experiences (Black 1992; Forster 1994; Suutari and Brewster 2003). Indeed, long-term
assignments are indicative of a career transition and personal transformation as inherent
288 T.L. Starr

aspects of the assignment process whereby change or adaptation is a necessity (Sanchez,

Spector and Cooper 2000). Although organizations have long overlooked the fact that
expatriates undergo profound individual change both personally and professionally from
assignment experiences (Harvey and Novicevic 2006), findings from relatively recent
studies using more qualitative or interpretative approaches to repatriation and change have
illustrated a wide range of expectations that differ from person to person and across
organizations. For example, Kohonen (2004, 2005), who examined the impact of long-
term assignments on expatriate identities, noted several transformational experiences and
identity changes that expatriates went through during their assignments. Re-arranging
and changing identities were constructed around the way repatriates viewed their ability or
inability to develop managerial competencies. This in turn impacted on how they talked
about repatriation and expectations about future work. In a similar vein, implicit change as
a journey of self-development was also evident in Peltonen’s (1999) narrative study on
career and long-term assignments through repatriation stories and emerging discourses
of identity formation and loss. In these instances, identity changes were conveyed
through talk about repatriation expectations and invariably linked to the ‘reality’ of what
kind of work individuals would or had returned to, and most importantly, what meaning
they attributed to this part of their assignment. What is evident from studies such as these
is how identity is discursively central to understanding repatriation expectations
associated with long-term assignments and the relevance of change from the individual’s
perspective.
In contrast to the literature on long-term assignments and repatriation expectations, a
prevailing assumption about short-term assignments is that they require less time away
from the ‘home’ organization and are thought too brief to effect change relative to career-
related expectations or create repatriation problems for returning assignees (Frazee 1997;
Solomon 1999; Lazarova and Caligiuri 2001; Konopaske and Werner 2005). Nevertheless,
very little is known about the repatriation expectations of short-term assignees, and the
impact of their experiences on their identities is a gap where the need for research has been
acknowledged (e.g. Collings and Scullion 2006; Howell 2006). This paper fills that gap by
using discourse analysis to analyse talk about repatriation expectations associated with
short-term assignments Thus, the focus here is not about adjustment to change or re-
adjustment in the traditional repatriation sense, but rather on identifying discourses of
change and meaning that surface in identity-based talk about repatriation expectations and
career-related outcomes. I will now move onto the methodology section of the paper
where the added value of using discourse analysis to surface identity in talk about change
and expectations will be examined. Details of the case study organization and participants
will follow, and the process of data collection and analysis are then reported.

Methodology
Discourse analysis and identity
Given the exploratory nature of this study into repatriation expectations about short-term
assignments, an interpretive framework and discursive approach to the analysis of ‘talk’
was particularly suited to identifying issues deemed most relevant by the participants
themselves. The approach adopted in this paper resonates with the ‘linguistic turn’ in
organizational research (e.g. Czarniawska 1998; Alvesson and Karreman 2000; Currie and
Brown 2003) and also extends the recent ‘turn’ to talk and identity evident within the long-
term assignment literature (e.g. Peltonen 1998, 1999; Glanz 2003; Kohonen 2004, 2005).
The major strength of using discourse analysis compared to other methods or approaches
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 289

to research is that it is capable of assessing how individuals tell, interpret and apply
individual meanings to talk about repatriation expectations and career-related outcomes.
This is an important characteristic as it links directly in talk to ‘personal transformation’
and the broader issues of identity production in work over time, thus giving shape and
organizational relevance to assignment experiences through individualized accounts
(Peltonen 1998).
Accordingly this paper examines the way expectations about short-term assignment
repatriation and discourses of change are used in talk to construct, or present one’s self, as
having a particular identity. For example, applying, or alternatively resisting the notion of
‘change’ in talk about yourself is as Coupland (2001, p. 1104) points out ‘heavy with
implication’ because either could be construed ‘as a good or bad thing but requires more
detail in order to make this distinction’. When considering how this might be relevant to
expectations about short-term assignment repatriation, individual interpretation as to the
meaning of ‘change’ can be best understood by looking discursively at the wider context
of the talk and how past and current experience is drawn on as a resource or basis of one’s
future identity.

Organizational context
The design of this research is a single-organization case-study. The participants were
employed by an American-based MNC engaged in developing fluid-based technologies
for the likes of Shell, BP, Ford and so on. Chemex, a pseudonym, operate internationally
within 26 countries claiming annual sales of about $4bn. The firm employs approximately
8,000 people, of which half are based at the US headquarters and the remaining half spread
globally across other work sites.
In addition to long-term assignments to facilitate team working and boost international
expansion efforts, short-term assignments have also been used by Chemex for some time.
In fact their numbers have risen to the extent that they now comprise over a third of
the firm’s total international assignments. The research and development (R&D) end of the
business accounts for the majority of assignments. Although small-scale R&D operations
exist in Singapore, Brazil, France and Germany, the bulk of assignments occur between
US HQ’s and the Midlands UK site, and so served as the basis for this study. Short-term
assignees are generally despatched on an ‘as and when needed’ individual basis rather than
collectively or in groups. Therefore criteria including job title, duties and responsibilities,
or tenure per se is not integral to international assignment selection. Consistent with
Tahvanainen et al. (2005) the reasons underlying short-term assignment deployment vary
considerably from ‘filling a gap’ or temporary vacancy; specialized ‘team-based’ projects;
to more generalized knowledge sharing across work-sites.
From 2001 to 2004, I carried out 48 on-site interviews with participants in both the US
and the UK who were currently on, or recently completed, either a short-term or long-term
assignment. Of this number, 22 had, or were engaged in, short-term assignments and it is
the repatriation-related expectations and experiences of these individuals that is the focus
of this paper. Across this cohort, company tenure ranged from 18 months to 38 years. As
this is a highly specialized industry, all held a Bachelors degree, with a number also
possessing a post graduate degree in a science-related field. Unless otherwise noted,
participants in the main were middle-managers working in R&D. Table 1 provides
additional details about the participants to contextualize the findings. Consonant with the
organization’s request, pseudonyms were used in place of names and job titles omitted to
maintain anonymity (Yin 1994).
290 T.L. Starr

Table 1. Participant details.

Tenure Home Host Assignment length

Name Gender (years) country country (months)
Joan F 15 USA UK 3
Bill M 8 USA UK 3
Ann F 5.5 UK USA 12
Mary F 11 UK USA 6
Dan M 9.5 USA UK 3
Lisa F 1.5 USA UK 3.5
John M 10 UK USA 2
Jo F 12 UK USA 12
Ian M 4 UK USA 3
Jim M 11 UK USA 3
Rita F 18 USA UK 6
Frank M 1.5 USA UK 4
Sandra F 17 UK USA 3
Ralph M 26 USA UK 9
Don M 5 USA UK 3
Gina F 15 USA UK 6.5
Mike M 8.5 USA 2 – UK 4.5 and 3
Ken M 12 USA UK 3
Ward M 25 USA 2 – UK; Singapore 12 and 6
Nick M 38 USA UK 6
Karen F 14 USA UK 12
Andrew M 4 USA UK 6

Data collection and analysis

The data used in this study were taken from taped and transcribed interviews. Semi-
structured interviews were used to capture the richness of ‘talk’, encourage participants to
provide a more detailed picture of themselves and insight into their experiences, and
enable individualized meanings about events to surface in socially situated talk (Kvale
1996). The interview schedule of questions concerned broad topics about short-term
assignments in general and questions were added or modified in accordance with areas of
interest raised by the participants. Interviews ranged from 45 to 90 minutes depending on
the participants’ time schedule and response.
The interviews were transcribed verbatim using a scaled-down version of transcription
notation developed by Jefferson (1984).1 The data were then analysed using discourse
analysis that draws on the principles of Potter and Wetherell (1987). During transcription,
attention was given to the content and structure of talk with a view to identifying
reiterating patterns and themes, and then annotated for similarity and variability.
A particularly salient theme that emerged concerned the implications of change directly
associated with talk about career-related repatriation outcomes. For some, change was a
desired expectation, for others however, changes to work roles signalled an undesirable
assignment ending. What was intriguing was that this contrasting discourse of change was
evident not only in talk by individuals who had recently repatriated, but also by those who
had newly expatriated or were nearing assignment completion. Therefore perspectives
from both current and repatriated participants about this dualistic topic of change are
included in the subsequent analysis and findings. In presenting the analysis I have provided
extended extracts of interview data wherever possible to aid understanding and
discursively highlight ‘the very construction of meaningful connections between distinct
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 291

events’ (Peltonen 1998, p. 877). However as with any research, what is presented here
reflects my own interests and interpretation, and I acknowledge that others will have
alternative views about the data and analysis (Brown 2000). In the next section, the two
distinctly different but nevertheless related themes relating to change and expectations are
presented and analysed separately as follows, Theme 1: ‘Negotiating individual change
and unwanted immobility’ and Theme 2: ‘Justifying and resisting the imposition of
change’.

Findings
This section begins by exploring the first theme ‘Negotiating individual change and
unwanted immobility’, where a discursive commonality shared by the three participants in
these extracts is how they mobilize overtly careerist identities (Brown and Coupland 2005)
by using their short-term assignment experience as an assumed trajectory for career
advancement. This is particularly notable in the way that ‘change’ features as an explicit
frame of reference for constructing expectations about repatriation. This is embedded in
the experience of transitioning where upward mobility is inextricably linked in talk to
anticipated assignment outcome. These claims to change also resonate with Mayerhofer
et al.’s (2004) study of ‘flexpatriates’ and deemed by some as a potential path to boost
one’s future career prospects in post-assignment work.
This first extract is from an interview with Ian who had recently returned to the UK
following a 3-month assignment in the US, which was necessitated by the need to utilize a
larger design-testing facility as part of a specialized team project.
Extract 1:
1. IAN when I came back (.) it was almost like an anti-climax because I’d gone back to
2. almost exactly what I had been doing only a few months earlier
3. INT same type of work ¼
4. IAN ¼ same type of work (.) same everything more or less (.) and that was (..) a
5. downer cause (.) you’re-you almost are maybe expecting something I mean
6. although your life has changed a great deal in 3 months (.) people’s lives here
7. have stayed the same for those 3 months (.) I don’t think you can expect them to
8. change for you (.) it’s the same when you come home you can’t expect to
9. change back
In this extract repatriation is dealt with through talk about personal change and implied
expectations of work. Resistance to institutional positioning and unmet assumptions about
returning to a different (presumably better?) job is legitimated through an identity-based
discourse of ‘them’ and ‘you’ (Malone 1997). The relevance of self-change creates a
distinction between the participant as someone with assignment experience and thus
different from other employees who lack such experience.
The participant initially depicts repatriation as a let-down ‘almost like an anti-climax’
(line 1) and reconstructs the experience correspondingly in lines 4 and 5 as ‘a downer’
(Sacks 1992). The absence of change between his pre- and post-assignment work role
‘almost exactly what I had been doing only a few months earlier’ draws on what
Pomerantz (1986) identified as extreme case formulations which provides the basis for
expressing this disappointment. The follow-up ‘you’re-you almost are maybe expecting
something’ (line 5) hints vaguely at the participants’ apparent desire for a positive change
(enhancement?) in work as an expected outcome of a short-term assignment and tends to
correspond with repatriation expectations often associated with long-term assignments
(Forster 1994; Stroh et al. 1998, 2000). Although he concedes the brevity of his
292 T.L. Starr

assignment in temporal terms ‘only a few months’ (line 2) and ‘3 months’ (lines 6 & 7), the
description ‘your life has changed a great deal’ (line 6) highlights the degree of change this
participant has seemingly undergone from this experience.
By presenting himself as having changed, Ian is able to characterize other non-
expatriate-experienced members of the organization as unchanged over that same period
of time. Such a contrast constitutes his identity as unique and consistent with having
moved forward as an explicit consequence of short-term assignment experience. His
acknowledgement ‘I don’t think you can expect them to change for you’ (lines 7 –8) serves
to justify a two-sided moral claim of mutual reciprocity ‘it’s the same when you come
home you can’t expect to change back’ (lines 8 –9) (Abell and Stokoe 1999). Arguably, the
evaluation suggests that just as imposing unwanted change on individuals without
assignment experience is unwarranted; it is equally unacceptable to expect returning
assignees to revert to a work identity synonymous with their pre-assignment past.
In this next extract, a similar pattern of talk about the lack of change upon repatriating
is also evident. This is from an interview with Ken, who had recently returned to the US
after completing a 3-month assignment in the UK which involved implementing
standardized ways of working accordingly through training.
Extract 2
1. KEN I mean you come back to the same job that you had (.) and it seems much
2. smaller than it was when you left (.) um (.) you want to (.) go (.) . . . you want to
3. keep it you know you want a broader job than you (.) than you had (.) that’s
4. my experience
In this extract, returning to the same (pre-assignment) job has taken on a different meaning
in that it now appears restrictive and less significant. Arguably, the description is
indicative of how this participant considers himself as having experienced ostensible
change and personal growth as a result of his assignment experience. His retentive claim
‘you want to keep it’ links implicitly to having held ‘a broader job’ whilst on assignment
and therefore, a post-assignment desire to return to a similar-level role is deemed a
reasonable expectation. Again and similar to the previous extract, this rendition of
expected change to one’s work role as a consequence of short-term assignment experience
aligns with expectations redolent of long-term assignments (Black and Gregersen 1992;
Stroh et al. 2000).In the following extract, the theme of repatriating back to the same job is
also considered in the analysis. However, an agentic spin on this issue is taken up by the
participant in talk about pre-empting a seemingly inevitable lack of change.
This segment is from an interview with Gina in the US who had recently come back
from completing a 6 1/2 month assignment in the UK where she had filled a temporary
vacancy. This is part of her lengthy response when asked if she had known prior to the end
of her assignment what she would be doing when she returned to the home organization.
Extract 3
1. GINA um (..) yes my boss is good about letting me know what I would come back
2. to (.) cause I had given him this article saying you know (.) it’s tough for
3. people to come back to exactly the same thing (laughter)
4. INT is that right (laughter)
5. GINA yeah yeah (laughter)
6. INT was that something out of the newspaper or a magazine
7. GINA (laughter) it was out of a Harvard Business Review (.) saying that repatriation
8. was always a big challenge for everyone (.) so I had copied this article for him (.)
9. so when he came out to visit me I said ‘oh here this is something for you to
10. think about’ (laughter) (.) cause it’s hard to go back to the same thing
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 293

Here the participant accounts for having taken a proactive role in guiding the outcome of
her short-term assignment. Her attempt to secure change in the form of a different work
role is presented as a personal concern rather than a demand, and justified by citing support
from the Harvard Business Review. According to Edwards and Potter (1992) using an
external source in talk to corroborate a viewpoint functions to create a generalized
consensus. In this instance, the description works effectively to point out that it is not just
the participant as an expatriate-experienced employee who is making this claim for
change, but also a well-known reputable business publication. Arguably, this extract is
indicative of how individual accountability and the desire for a change to one’s work role
after a short-term assignment may be given over to management through innovative
negotiation. Perhaps this is also an example of what HR Professionals in Tahvanainen et al.
(2005, p. 667) coined as ‘a repatriate’s own activity’ although here strategic action
was used to make a case for a change in post-assignment work and unrelated to a pre-
assignment job closure.
In this first theme, the three views expressed, although distinctive, were not unlike
traditional expectations of work-related change associated with long-term assignment
repatriation in that the lack of change as an undesirable outcome to a short-term
assignment was representative of a shared concern. Studies such as Allen and Alvarez
(1998) have pointed out how long-term assignments inherently restrict individuals from
progressing back in the home organization due to extended absence. The analysis here
shows that this is also of equal concern for individuals undertaking short-term
assignments. What was decidedly different was that the desire for progression based on
short-term assignment experience was something that should entail a new or unknown
change to one’s work role rather than a guaranteed ‘ladder’ to promotion. Such views
resonate with Mayerhofer et al. (2004) in that the potential to advance one’s own career
opportunities as an expected outcome to an ‘alternative’ assignment may be limited or
indeed, non-existent for some. In contrast to implicit upward mobility, the second theme
explores the desire for sameness and resistance to change between pre- and post-short-
term assignment work roles.

Theme 2: Justifying and resisting the imposition of change

In this second theme, three extracts of talk are presented that concern having to change or
move jobs as a less than favourable or presumed understanding about short-term
assignment repatriation. Re-assuming a pre-assignment job back in the home organization
is presented as an expected outcome and contrasts to aspirations of returning to a different
(better?) work role evident in the analysis of the previous theme.
The first extract is taken from an interview with Ralph who at the time was 2 months
into a 9-month assignment in the UK from the US which involved implementing similar
teamwork practices in place in the US.
Extract 4
1. RALPH well that’s the one thing everybody-all the expats that uh all the people that
2. have returned (.) because one-one of the things I-I’ve made it very-I said that
3. I want to return to the job that I was doing
Here, a prevailing consensus about the prospect of having to change one’s work upon
repatriation within the home organization is supported by using ‘everybody’, ‘all the
expats’, and ‘all the people’ (Bonache 2005). Presenting a collective agreement that draws
on the experience of others serves to acknowledge change as a normative but objectionable
294 T.L. Starr

understanding about repatriation (Malone 1997). To avoid the inevitability of a similar

outcome, the participant details having taken agentic action which in effect, works to
distinguish himself from other returning expatriates. In so doing, the overall description
justifies his explicit request ‘to return to the job that I was doing’ against the potential
imposition of change.
In the next two extracts, expectations that involve returning to a pre-assignment job
is also implicit in talk as a presumed post-assignment outcome. In a similar vein, the
participants mobilize personal and creatively resistant understandings to change by
maintaining their sense of identity within a framework of continuity (Brown and Coupland
2005).
This extract is taken from an interview with Nick who had recently returned to the US
after a 1-year assignment in the UK where he had been sent to standardize technology-
based work practices.
Extract 5
1. NICK oh it wasn’t spelled out but ah (..) I was just-I just assumed I would come back to
2. the same position (.) the same job
In this extract, returning to an unchanged pre-assignment role is constructed as an assumed
outcome. Despite acknowledging the lack of explicit disclosure about his repatriated role,
this is dealt with in a confident albeit vague manner ‘oh it wasn’t spelled out but’.
Although the description implies an absence of confirmation, the relevance of ‘assumed’
suggests that this specific detail was apparently an aspect that had not been brought up for
re-negotiation. This enables the participant to construct what seems to be a largely
unproblematic return to the home organization that culminates with re-filling an ‘old’
work role. Presenting the talk in this fashion confines repatriation, at least for this
participant, to only one possible ending, which in this case entails an unchanged working
self that aligns with resuming the same job he held prior to the assignment.
In the next extract, the imposition of individual change in post-assignment work is
both unexpected and unwanted. What is distinctive about this talk is that the relevance of
having to go back to a different job is portrayed in a way that impedes the objectives of the
short-term assignment and deployed as a legitimate grievance. This is taken from an
interview with Dan who was just 1-month into a 3-month short-term assignment in the
UK from the US which involved joint problem solving and information sharing with UK
counterparts.
Extract 6
1. DAN I guess one interesting is (.) which has already come up ah you know my supervisor
2. saying ‘so ah what do you want to do when you come back’ (.) I guess initially
3. I assumed that I’d be doing all the same things when I get back (.) as when I left
4. so I don’t know why I wouldn’t be doing more of a similar type thing when I got
5. back because the whole point is for me to see how people work over here and how I
6. can make things better you know between the ((UK Site)) and ((US Site))
In this segment, the participant positions himself within a contested discourse of change
and expectation as it relates to his future repatriated role within the home organization
(Iedema and Wodak 1999). The participant describes how the subject of an unexpected
change in repatriation circumstances was recently brought to his attention by a
supervisor. Although his constructed expectation ‘I guess initially I assumed’ (line 2)
echoes a similar view expressed in the previous extract, here the underlying purpose of
the assignment is used to counter such change thus creating a clearly unwanted and
dilemmatic situation.
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 295

In line 4, ‘I don’t know why’ functions as both a sense-making tool (Weick 1995)
and as an antecedent to a two-sided argument aimed at resisting change through
pragmatics and continuity (Abell and Stokoe 1999). This is manifest by the way the
participant attends to the objectives of his assignment as a reciprocal transfer of personal
knowledge ‘for me to see how people work over here and how I can make things better’
(lines 5 –6) (Riusala and Suutari 2004; Bossard and Peterson 2005; Harvey and
Novicevic 2006). Constructing his assignment as a contingent and mutual venture likens
the participant’s assignment role to that of a catalyst sent to establish global
synchronicity between the home and host work sites. The description enables the
participant to question the motives of the company using an identity-based discourse of
continuity as a way to sustain resistance to change. The likelihood of having to return to
a different job in the home organization is contradictory by implication as it functions
to hinder the participant from achieving the original goal of the assignment. Arguably,
this discursively renders the assignment a failure at the hands of the organization. This
extract is an example of how unexpected and unwanted change not only interferes with,
but inevitably impacts on one’s ability to maintain a coherent identity (Ibarra 1999).
Much has been written within the long-term assignment literature about the inability of
organizations to utilize the skills of returning expatriates (e.g. Forster 1994; Hammer, Hart
and Rogan 1998; Stroh et al. 1998, 2000). This segment is indicative of the way short-term
assignment repatriation may also succumb to a similar demise at the hands of the
organization. This was evident through identity markers and boundaries which linked in
talk to the unexpected levy of undesirable change, and how future repatriated versions of
the participant were continually negotiated and resisted (Edwards and Potter 1992). In
both this and the preceding two extracts, the common denominator was a shared and
assumed view that short-term assignment repatriation would (should?) conclude with a
return to one’s ‘old’ job back in the home organization. By attending to the implications of
change, whether assumed or unexpected to one’s work role as a consequence of returning
to the home organization created a particular understanding about short-term assignment
repatriation.
In this theme, taken-for-granted expectations of upward mobility or changes in work
usually associated with long-term assignments were not a concern for these participants.
Instead sustaining a continuum between pre- and post-assignment jobs was the main issue.
This produced arguably ‘new’ and normative understandings about repatriation relative to
short-term assignment undertaking. Also apparent was how expectations about returning
to work in the capacity of one’s ‘old’ pre-assignment role provided a distinctly less-
demanding alternative compared to presumptions of short-term assignments as vehicles of
individual change and career progression expressed in the first theme. Moreover, the
accounts presented here were illustrative of how talk about the desire for an unaffected
future also served to constitute short-term assignment identities as unchanged. Arguably,
these alternative discourses of change provide further insight into expectations about
repatriation and work.

Discussion
In this paper, a discursive approach to research has been used to explore talk about
repatriation by participants who were currently on, or had recently completed, short-term
international assignments. The study highlighted the various ways that expectations and
change could be used as a discursive basis for identity construction relative to future work
roles. There were two distinctly opposing themes about change and repatriation
296 T.L. Starr

expectations that were unpacked in the analysis which were ‘Negotiating individual change
and unwanted immobility’ and ‘Assuming, justifying and resisting change’. Evident in
each theme was how talk about change linked to expectations of repatriation and created a
number of dilemmas for the participants. The discursive relationship between identity
change and expected or indeed, unexpected repatriation outcomes in this paper clearly
undermines prevailing assumptions that short-term assignments are indicative of an easy or
otherwise unproblematic process of re-integration back into one’s ‘home’ worksite.
One issue that emerged was the apparent need by most of the participants to justify
claims that repatriating back into the home organization ‘is/was or ‘would be’ the most
important or unsettling aspect of their entire short-term assignment experience. What
seemed to be most important for these participants was how accounting for a particular
repatriated work identity aligned with a desire to fit or ‘re-fit’ back into the ‘home’
organization according to individual definition and career-related concerns.
A second issue that confronted some of the participants was that to some extent it was
not so much a traditional ‘out of sight out of mind’ construction of repatriation (e.g. Allen
and Alvarez 1998; Black and Gregersen 1999; Hammer et al. 1998), but rather an ‘out of
sight but not really what I had in mind’ identity-based collection of particularized accounts
about work. This was of equal concern not only by individuals who were recently
repatriated, but also by those who had newly expatriated or were nearing assignment
completion. Previous research into long-term assignments suggests that expatriates in
general are responsible for forming their own expectations about change and repatriation
(e.g. Stroh and Caligiuri 1998; Bonache, Brewster and Suutari 2001). Here, participants
either drew on their short-term assignment experience or organizational others for creating
or imposing particular expectations about repatriation and career-related outcomes. Also
of particular interest was that talk about short-term assignment repatriation in this paper
was not constructed as atypical or indeed ‘short’ in the temporal sense by the participants
themselves. This was apparent in identity-based talk about desired or undesired change,
and an arguably lack of consensus about what is, or should be expected from repatriation
by individuals engaged in what are generally assumed as short stretches away from the
‘home’ work site (Stroh et al. 1998, 2000; Brewster et al. 2001; Tahvanainen et al. 2005).
Furthermore, the discursive productions of self-storied talk were characteristic of
repatriation as a contextual sense-making process of identity development (Glanz 2003).
The interview setting served as a place of social action where ‘talk’ not only said
something about the participants’ identities, but also ‘did’ things for them in the way
repatriation expectations were presented and negotiated Arguably, the findings illustrate
how ‘talk’ is anything but neutral (Brown and Coupland 2005) and in this case goes some
way to challenge taken-for-granted understandings about the meaning of change and
short-term assignment experience.
In this paper, situations and events were drawn on in meaningful talk to convey
different interpretations about change and understanding about repatriation expectations.
The construction of resistance, negotiation and acceptance of change to one’s identity
appears to counter the view that repatriation associated with short-term assignments at
least from an HR perspective is a non-issue. Similar to Kohonen’s (2005) research with
long-term assignees, the findings in this paper are indicative of how identity changes
(or resistance) relates to repatriation expectations and is inextricably linked to assignment
experience. What is clear is that short-term assignment experience also culminates in
individualized repatriation expectations and thus indicative of the need for organizations
to respond in HR terms to the ‘different types, objectives and different circumstances’ that
surround these assignments (Collings et al. 2007).
 The International Journal of Human Resource Management 297

Conclusion and implications

What this paper offers is an array of repatriation expectations embedded in a collection
of individualized accounts of change within one organization. The contradictory nature of
repatriation was salient through talk about varied or unchanged identities that linked to
desired or unwelcome expectations of change in the ‘home’ workplace. As a result, some
novel developments and issues have been raised and presented for consideration. The
findings gleaned through a discursive analysis of accounts from the expatriates’
perspective contend that just as short-term assignments vary in terms of purpose and
context; so too do the individuals who undertake them. Such findings extend Brewster et al.
(2001) in that short-term assignments may to a certain extent avoid some of the problems
traditionally associated with long-term assignments, but also create new issues. It is
argued that employing a discursive approach to talk enables exploration and identification
of such issues.
A further and distinctive feature of discourse analysis is that it is also useful for
highlighting practical management issues and implications akin to ‘the peculiarities and
specificities of the short-term assignment (Morley and Heraty 2004, p. 642). Aligning with
Harvey and Novicevic’s (2006) call for organizational re-entry support and preparation to
assist long-term assignees with re-constructing their identities in the ‘home’ organization,
the findings here suggest intervention for short-term assignees should also begin before the
actual process of repatriation ensues. What is evident is that the standard expatriate
framework seems insufficient for meeting the different challenges that short-term
assignments present. In particular the lack of repatriation pre-planning and ‘ad hoc’
procedures identified in this paper ostensibly require novel ways of managing on the part
of the employing organization. For some participants, traditional assignment outcomes of
different (better?) jobs and upward mobility were also assumed or expected as a career-
enhancing outcome to a short-term assignment experience. This was justified by talking
about themselves as having changed or grown from their experience. In accounts where
such expectations had not been realized, the impact of this on the individual was
perplexing and dilemmatic. Conversely, for other participants, the prospect of any change
to ‘old’ or previous work roles following their assignment was clearly an unanticipated
or unwanted career move. This contrasts with Tahvanainen et al. (2005) where most
short-term assignees were aware from the start whether they would be repatriating
back to their ‘old’ pre-assignment job or alternatively going back to a different or new
job. Here, inconsistent expectations articulated through a case-by-case analysis identified
an assortment of ‘new’ normative understandings about short-term assignment
repatriation.
Moreover, and not unlike research into long-term assignment repatriation (e.g.
Scullion 1994; Suutari and Brewster 2003), the variability of expectations expressed here
may also have the potential to impact on how acceptable short-term assignments may be
for other organizational members in future, and also influence whether repatriated short-
term assignees stay or leave the organization. Arguably, these findings have relevance in
that they have offered new and meaningful perspectives about repatriation from the
expatriates’ viewpoint and made visible the ‘subjective nature of the experience’ (Osland
2000, p. 227). Whether constraints, opportunities and conflicts associated with
expectations about short-term assignment repatriation espoused by the participants in
this study are organization-specific, or indeed, prevalent across comparable industries or
workplaces where similar assignments are deployed, is a topic that would benefit from
further enquiry.
298 T.L. Starr

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Professor Graeme Currie for his support and feedback, and also
extend thanks to the anonymous reviewer for constructive comments on an earlier version of this
paper.

Note
1. Transcription notation:
(.) A dot between parentheses indicates a slight pause of about a second and more dots indicate
longer pauses e.g. ( . . . ) about 3 seconds
¼ Equal sign indicates no interval or pause between the talk of two people
- A hyphen indicates a change or quick re-wording to what is being said
( ) Single parentheses indicate verbal behaviour, vocalisations e.g. cough, laughter

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