What is it about?
Employees returning from overseas assignments often expect promotions and chances to share their knowledge. Tracking 117 German repatriates, we find that meeting career expectations boosts satisfaction and retention, especially for non-managers, but meeting knowledge-sharing expectations can reduce satisfaction and increase turnover risk. Different expectations can have opposite effects, meaning organizations must tailor support to employee roles.
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Why is it important?
This research matters because returning home after an international assignment doesn’t guarantee a good next step at work. We found that career expectations and opportunities to share knowledge can affect returnees differently. Understanding that difference can help organizations support returning employees, keep their valuable experience, and make better use of what they learned abroad.
Perspectives
Expatriate communities were part of my childhood. Years later, I found myself researching the experiences of expatriates. My parents were organizational expatriates, so I grew up among their colleagues, other expatriate families, and the networks around them. That personal connection made this project especially meaningful. The paper also took an interesting path. My co-author and I met as PhD students and began working on it then. When Dr. Knocke became an expatriate himself and moved to China and Vietnam, the project paused. Picking it up again gave us a chance to rethink the role of expectations—and to question the assumption that fulfilled expectations are always a good thing.
Ebru Ipek
San Francisco State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Not all fulfilled expectations are good: the role of career and knowledge transfer in repatriate outcomes, Career Development International, September 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/cdi-08-2025-0451.
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