This chapter introduces background information and recent trends in expatriation. It begins by briefly reviewing the early literature on expatriation, from the 1960s to the late-1980s. It then describes changes that occurred in the 1990s that transformed radically the area of global mobility. Finally, the chapter outlines key trends in global mobility that define the landscape of the topic today. The chapter concludes by summarising the contents and key contributions that the reader will find in each chapter of this book.

In this chapter, we provide a review of mainstream practice and research on global mobility compensation. We begin by briefly explaining the traditional system used for international compensation, namely, the balance sheet system, and identify its main advantages and weaknesses. We then describe and structure the current landscape of international compensation, highlighting the increasing variety and complexity that characterizes this essential area of global competitive dynamics in human resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of some topics and themes for future research in this area.

While there has been progress for women in globally mobile work, there are enduring problems and challenges. In particular, women continue to be under-represented in management and leadership roles worldwide. In this chapter, we summarise current knowledge about women and globally mobile work and present a framework of factors that may either facilitate or hinder global mobility for women. We identify some important gaps in knowledge and suggest areas for future research to improve understanding of the experiences of women and their participation in global mobility. Finally, we offer practical recommendations for policy-makers, organisations that manage globally mobile workers, leaders and managers, and women who are currently and/or aspire to be globally mobile.

Adjustment is the process of changing behaviour, feelings, and cognitions to achieve a balance with the environment. Adjustment is needed whenever an individual transfers from a familiar setting to an unfamiliar setting to interact effectively and to feel a sense of belonging. Expatriates experience adjustment in the cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions and across different domains such as for example work, culture, and personal domains. The needed change includes new routines and uncertainty which might cause anxiety. Adjustment to the new situational context is essential for expatriation success. In this chapter, we examine what we have learnt from the literature. We discuss antecedents to adjustment and critically reflect on the most common approaches to analysing expatriate adjustment. Furthermore, new alternatives on how to understand adjustment that mitigate the limitations of previous models will be highlighted and we will provide insights on how to apply a holistic assessment. Finally, we will provide our readers with some practical and research implications.

This chapter explores international working options other than expatriation and migration, focusing, in particular, on three of the main alternative ‘other’ ways of arranging international work: short-term assignments (STAs), international business travel (IBTs), and international commuting (McNulty & Brewster, 2019). These ‘other’ ways of working in another country tend to be shorter and, crucially, do not involve relocating ‘home’ or taking the family, if there is one, with them. The chapter explores some of the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative forms of international experience.

Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are an important group of the globally mobile workforce. In contrast to assigned expatriates (AEs), SIEs relocate on their own volition and without company support. In recent years, the literature on SIEs has started to burgeon leading to an enhanced knowledge of SIEs. The purpose of this chapter is to first review and summarize central findings in the nascent body of research concerned with SIEs. In this regard, we focus on the following key areas of inquiry: definitions of SIEs, their (demographic) profiles, main motivations to relocate, cross-cultural adjustment, as well as career experiences, and outcomes of self-initiated expatriation. In second step, based on our overview of the extant literatures, we outline directions for future research on SIEs in each key area. The suggested future research avenues will be helpful to guide the next generation of studies on SIEs and to move this stream of research ahead.

Contemporary philosophers often talk about the difference (and conflict) between the so-called manifest and scientific images of the world, a distinction famously introduced in 1962 by Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars favoured what he termed a ‘stereoscopic’ vision of the relationship between the two images, according to which a major task of philosophy is to articulate a view of the world that simultaneously takes account of the two perspectives. Sellars’s students soon divided into two camps. One group (e.g., Patricia and Paul Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Jay Rosenberg) has taken the position that whenever a conflict arises, the scientific image trumps the manifest one. A second group (e.g., Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Richard Rorty), by contrast, thinks that certain differences between the two images actually point to some of the limits of science, especially, but not only, when it comes to social categories and phenomena. This chapter explores two examples that encapsulate the debate between the so-called right and left wings of Sellarsian thought, suggesting a renewed research programme for philosophy in general, aiming at articulating the original stereoscopic vision that defines human understanding of the world as an integration of the two images – essentially, a confluence of common sense and scientific sense.

This chapter traces the history of the Scottish school of common-sense philosophy from c.1720 to 1828. It begins by examining the teaching of George Turnbull and his fellow regents at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in order to shed light on the early philosophical development of the so-called founder of the school, Thomas Reid. It next analyses the evolution of Reid’s critique of Humean scepticism and the theory of ideas in the years preceding the publication of his An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). Reid’s appeal to common sense is then compared and contrasted with those of James Beattie and James Oswald, whose writings, along with Reid’s Inquiry, were attacked by Joseph Priestley and other critics in the 1770s. Following a consideration of Reid’s response to Priestley in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), the chapter discusses Dugald Stewart’s reformulation of Reid’s conception of common sense and his genealogy of the Scottish school of philosophy. Lastly it charts the collapse of the common-sense school around the time of Stewart’s death in 1828.

This chapter explores why we should think common sense has epistemic authority. First, it lays out exactly what common sense and the supposed epistemic authority of common sense amount to. It then assesses seven proposals that we find in the literature as to why common sense has epistemic authority. They say, respectively, that common-sense beliefs are irresistible; that there are no serious epistemic alternatives to thinking that common-sense beliefs have epistemic authority; that common-sense beliefs are certain, or at least more certain than any alternatives; that common-sense beliefs are instances of knowledge; that common-sense beliefs are vague and ambiguous and, therefore, likely to be true; that common-sense beliefs are the product of a reliable process of cultural evolution; and, finally, that God would not deceive us on such a large scale. The chapter argues that the first five answers are not convincing, not even jointly, but that the sixth answer is and that the seventh reply may well be combined with it.

How ontologically committal is common sense? Is the common-sense philosopher beholden to a florid ontology in which all manner of objects, substances, and processes exist and are as they appear to be to common sense, or can she remain neutral on questions about the existence and nature of many things because common sense is largely non-committal? This chapter explores and tentatively evaluates three different approaches to answering these questions. The first applies standard accounts of ontological commitment to common-sense claims. This leads to the surprising and counter-intuitive result that common sense has metaphysically heavyweight commitments. The second approach emphasizes the superficiality and locality of common-sense claims. On this approach, however, common sense comes out as almost entirely non-committal. The third approach questions the seriousness of ontological commitment as such. If ontological commitment is cheap, it becomes possible both to accept the commitments of common sense at face value and to avoid the counter-intuitive consequences of heavyweight metaphysical commitments.

What role does ordinary-language philosophy play in the defence of common-sense beliefs? J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein each give central place to ordinary language in their responses to sceptical challenges to common-sense beliefs. But Austin and Wittgenstein do not always respond to such challenges in the same way, and their working methods are different. This chapter compares Austin’s and Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical positions and shows that they share many metaphilosophical commitments. It then examines Austin’s and Wittgenstein’s respective takes on the problem of other minds and the problem of our knowledge of the external world. Interestingly, we find Wittgenstein employing methods more frequently associated with Austin and vice versa. Moreover, we find that a variety of defences of common-sense beliefs are compatible with ordinary-language philosophy.

This chapter argues for the following claims. (1) There is no content that groups the propositions of common sense together. (2) The common-sense grouping has a real purpose: it delineates propositions that we are at a very minimum justified in believing. (3) Common-sense propositions are to be found at the intersection of not-science-based yet widely held beliefs, beliefs not based on testimony or inference, and beliefs whose denials are pragmatically incoherent. (4) Commonsensicality is a graded concept: there are degrees in which propositions are propositions of common sense. (5) Propositions of common sense are objects of at least one of the following attitudes: belief, disposition to believe, or taking for granted in the sense of presupposing them, either as a justification-conferring presupposition or as a pragmatic presupposition. (6) Although we can give up common-sense propositions, we should only do so in the face of very weighty evidence.

The common-sense tradition holds that among the things we know are various facts about the external world and some epistemic facts – for example, that we know there are other people, that people know their names, and that we know that they know their names. This chapter makes two claims. First, that the common-sense tradition should include among the things known various common-sense moral claims as well as various particular moral claims that are no less evident. Second, that these moral claims are more reasonable to believe than any philosophical view that implies either that they are false or that we do not know them. In short, it suggests that the common-sense philosopher should treat some moral claims as having the same weight as some epistemic claims and claims about the external world. The last three sections consider some philosophical objections to this view. These include the objections that no evaluative claims are true or false, that we cannot know particular moral claims without knowing some general moral criterion, and that the appeal to our moral intuitions is illegitimate in philosophical inquiry.