Organizational inputs to the formation of the expatriate psychological contract: towards an episodic understanding

Adopting an organizational perspective, we focus on how the expatriate psychological contract is formed. We argue that in order to build cumulative knowledge in this early phase of the expatriate psychological contract formation process, attention should be called to three significant organizational led formative episodic events, namely the selection process for the international assignment, the pre-departure training and preparation provided to the assignee, along with the organizational support offered on initial entry to the host-location as the expatriate seeks to make sense of multiple-domain aspects of the novel environment. While acknowledging that there are many other individual and contextual influences shaping the contract formation process, we contend that these three episodes, in particular, are each likely to differentially shape the formation process in the light of the information signalled by the organization to the expatriate and its subsequent interpretation. Arising from this, we advance several linked propositions in each of the three domain areas designed to direct future research on organizational inputs to the expatriate psychological contract formation process.