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1. Introduction
In the current era of rapid business globalization, the relevance of international assignments has strongly increased (Andresen and Margenfeld, 2015; Dickmann and Harris, 2005; Downes and Thomas, 2000; Ren et al., 2015). Many organizations have recognized that international assignments play a crucial role in developing global competencies, implementing successful international business strategies and securing competitive advantages (Kraimer et al., 2009; Ren et al., 2015). Thus, it is not surprising to see that 75 percent of the companies surveyed in the latest Global Relocation Trends Report expected the number of international assignees to either increase or remain the same (Brookfield Global Relocation Services, 2016). While organizations have quite a comprehensive understanding of the challenges employees experience when going abroad and how they can more effectively manage these experiences (Bader and Schuster, 2015), they know much less about the challenges of homecoming expatriates (Kraimer et al., 2012). One reason for this is the assumption that expatriates who return to their familiar home country may not encounter the same severe challenges they had faced when adjusting to a foreign country. In general, the return to the home country (repatriation) represents the final phase of an international assignment for the vast majority of expatriates, a phase, however, that can be as disorienting and frustrating for employees as the actual international assignment (Breitenmoser and Berg, 2017). In fact, it is frequently argued that repatriation issues are often more challenging, more insidious and widely underestimated when compared to those experienced during expatriation (O’Sullivan, 2013). Due to manifold reasons (e.g. insufficient organizational support, missing career prospects, protean career attitudes, etc.) the transition from expatriation to repatriation frequently ends in repatriates leaving their organizations to explore external job opportunities (Kraimer et al., 2012; Szkudlarek and Sumpter, 2015). Empirical evidence confirms that more than 50 percent of international assignee turnover happen within the first two years after their repatriation (Brookfield Global Relocation Services, 2015).
The high turnover of repatriates is particularly damaging for organizations, as they lose the employee’s recently acquired global competences (Valk et al., 2015). Moreover, repatriates who decide to leave their organization often take positions in competing firms (Lazarova and Caligiuri, 2001). Finally, the signals that stem from dissatisfied repatriates may weaken the...