Expatriate academics: what have we known for four decades? A systematic literature review

PurposeThe main objective of this paper is twofold: to analyse the progress of a research stream concerning expatriate academics in the last four decades and to make recommendations for further studies in this field.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) concerning expatriate academics was applied. The search embraced the period from 1980–2022. The review was performed in two interdisciplinary electronic databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The selection process of papers was conducted in steps, as recommended by the PRISMA protocol. The total pool of articles received after the exclusion criteria was 110. The content of each paper was thus extracted and categorised in Excel file: author, year of publication, tittle of article, journal, theory applied, research method, sample size, country/field of investigation.FindingsFor almost three decades this topic was almost absent in the literature of the subject. The most active publication period started from 2009 and since then there have been two “waves” of published articles devoted to expatriate academics: 2009–2014 and 2017–2021. The significant number of studies appeared in Journal of Global Mobility followed by Personnel Review, IJHRM, Higher Education. The thematic analysis revealed six themes which have been already researched on expatriates academics: (1) motives, (2) adjustment, (3) job factors and work outcomes, (4) academic missions, (5) academic career, (6) women and men in academia.Practical implicationsPractitioners and university management might find this article useful as the article allows to manage this pool of international academics more efficiently with mutual benefits for expatriates and organisations. This study may assist the university authorities to develop systemic approach to attract foreign academics; adjust the same in work and culture domain through effective training; support in organisational, financial and career field; create the performance criteria of expatriate work related to three missions: research, teaching and service; introduce metrics and indicators to evaluate the contribution and work outcomes of foreign scientists into the host university.Originality/valueThis review shows that there are many new perspectives and models through which the academic expatriation can be analysed. This paper gives an insight into the academic literature on academics expatriates. The paper is innovative and has contributed to research by doing an SLR in a new area (academic expats) and tackling all the areas that has been covered by academic research so far. New research directions have been recommended for future research, to open the field further.