Self-initiated academic expatriates: Inherent demographics and reasons to expatriate Jan Selmer, Jakob Lauring Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Aarhus V, Denmark Correspondence: Jan Selmer, Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Haslegaardsvej 10, Aarhus V DK-8210, Denmark. Tel: þ 45 8948 6688; Fax: þ 45 8948 6467 Abstract Research on expatriate employees has to date focused mainly on organizational expatriates, so-called because they have been assigned by a parent company to a host country. Relatively little research has been conducted on self-initiated expatriate (SIE) employees. Hence, not enough is known about this type of expatriate. This paper examines the inherent demographics of SIEs. Data were collected from 428 expatriate academics from 60 countries, employed in 35 universities in five northern European countries. Results provided support for half of the propositions predicting that SIEs’ reasons to expatriate differ according to age and gender. Implications of the findings are discussed. European Management Review (2010) 7, 169–179. doi:10.1057/emr.2010.15; published online 26 August 2010 Keywords: self-initiated expatriates; reasons to expatriate; demographics; academics Introduction T he internationalization of business has resulted in a need to manage global operations and associated expa- triate staff effectively. This has contributed to an increased focus in academic research on expatriates and their international assignments (cf. Hechanova et al., 2003; Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005). The overwhelming majority of such studies have made little attempt to distinguish between different types of expatriates, the assumption being that expatriates are organizational expatriates (OEs), so labelled because they have been assigned by their parent companies to a host location. However, the nature and purpose of international assignments is becoming increas- ingly complex (Mayerhofer et al., 2004). This has led to a range of new roles and career paths for expatriates (Collings et al., 2007). Some of these emerging populations of expa- triates have been termed, ‘international itinerants’ (Banai and Harry, 2004) or ‘independent internationally mobile professionals’ (McKenna and Richardson, 2007). These recent trends in international assignments are characterized by individuals who take personal responsibility of their career trajectories without the direct support of an organi- zation (Carr et al., 2005). Such individuals have been labelled self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) (Lee, 2005). Although recently increasing, there is still a dearth of research on SIEs (cf. Inkson et al., 1997; Suutari and Brewster, 2000; Jokinen et al., 2008). This is surprising since SIEs have been claimed to make up a larger share of the international workforce than OEs (Myers and Pringle, 2005). Hence, not enough is known about this important but under-researched group of expatriates. Because of clear differences between OEs and SIEs (Inkson et al., 1997), more research has been called for to better understand issues associated with SIEs and their expatriation (Suutari and Brewster, 2000; Vance, 2005). An important issue concerns the personal characteristics of SIEs, and if SIEs do have defining personal characteristics, can their reasons to expatriate be differentiated by these characteristics. This is a matter not well understood regarding OEs, and much less so in the case of SIEs, for whom individual-level reasons to expatriate tend to dominate since organizational perspectives are typically missing (cf. Shay and Baak, 2004; Dickmann et al., 2008). In this study we focus on SIE academics as a specific type of expatriate who are seeking job opportunities in univer- sities in locations outside their home countries. Universities can be considered to have the character of professional European Management Review (2010) 7, 169–179 & 2010 EURAM Macmillan Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved 1740-4754/10 palgrave-journals.com/emr/