Trust and expatriation: An integrative review of the literature and a research agenda

Multinational enterprises need high‐status expatriates to enhance their workforce and improve coordination and control. Such employees face personal and socio‐political challenges that require the creation and sustenance of multipartite mutual trust between organisations and their expatriates, as well as host country nationals. Nevertheless, there have been few studies on how trust related to such individuals is formed, developed, maintained or breached and no comprehensive analysis. Our objective is to synthesise organisational and interpersonal trust with expatriation across the full life cycle and to develop a conceptual framework for future research and practice. We conducted a Boolean search using ProQuest Central and applied exclusion criteria to examine 46 relevant empirical articles. This review reveals that most research only considers part of the expatriation life cycle, being rather limited to the time spent in the host country. We examine expatriation through a trust lens and synthesise two complementary literature streams to offer a holistic conceptual framework spanning predeparture, on‐assignment and repatriation stages.