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Global work—any work arrangement that spans multiple countries and involves employees who are collaborating with one another, are culturally diverse and often are geographically dispersed—is a fascinating and timely research domain given the current social, technological, and geopolitical landscape. It may therefore be particularly tempting to explore novel theories and phenomena, and we have indeed seen a proliferation of new theories over recent years. However, we argue the global work domain needs to balance new theory development more carefully with theory testing and replication if it is to build cumulative scientific knowledge. In this editorial, we review established models and newer theories of global work that offer opportunities for theory testing, including (a) expatriate adjustment and adaptation theories, (b) models of global leadership effectiveness and expatriate managerial behavior, and (c) frameworks of global career consequences. We also identify existing empirical studies, whose replications would help advance the global work domain. This involves (a) deductively testing inductively developed models, (b) expanding existing studies to other types of global workers or adding meaningful new variables to a conceptual model that was examined, (c) using alternative methodological approaches to assess the predictions or research questions, or (d) adopting novel measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 altered employees' work worldwide and drastically reduced international mobility, affecting millions of global professionals. Drawing on repeated interviews with a sample of 30 global professionals before and after the start of the pandemic, we explored how global professionals' prior experiences and specific characteristics of the pandemic influenced their interpretations of and responses to the disruption. We discovered three response pathways. First, participants who recounted tensions in how they related to distant others at work before the pandemic viewed the globally shared nature of the disruption as an opportunity to alleviate these tensions by plugging in to bond with others. Second, respondents who had experienced ambivalence regarding their work interpreted the pandemic-induced travel restrictions as an opportunity to ease the ambivalence by pondering over their work identity. Third, participants who experienced discrepancies between their local self and their mobile aspirational self pre-pandemic interpreted the pandemic and the associated travel bans as a threat to their aspirations and momentarily paused their identity work during the pandemic, in keeping with the event's temporariness. Through our discoveries, we develop a process model of how individuals address their prior identity tensions following major work disruptions, and we advance the identity and global mobility literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theorize about how people with positional power enact "downward deference"--a practice of lowering oneself to be equal to lower-power workers--based on a study of 115 top global leaders at a large U.S. company. These leaders were charged with advancing organizational goals in foreign markets. We find that some leaders enacted downward deference when they recognized that they had less expertise, networks, and influence relative to their local subordinates. This manifested in two ways: (a) attempts to reduce social distance, which involved seeking connection, earning trust, and participating in adjacent collaboration with local subordinates, and (b) yielding to subordinates' expertise by privileging their judgment, transferring influence to them, and conforming to their local hierarchical expectations. Our supplementary quantitative analyses showed that previous experiences in foreign cultures, both in terms of total time spent abroad and exposure to cultures that were distant from their own, correlated with adopting downward deference. Those leaders also had higher job performance ratings, and were promoted to higher executive levels over time, compared to their counterparts who did not practice downward deference. Our study expands our understanding of positional power, social distance, and the conditions under which actors practice downward deference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How intertwined are expatriates with their families? And what makes some expatriates better than others at leveraging positive or compensating for negative influences from their family life? Drawing on conservation of resources, crossover and spillover theories, we examine when partner family role adjustment influences expatriates' family experiences, and how and when these experiences translate into expatriate work role engagement. Using data from 105 expatriate–partner dyads at two time points, we establish the key personal resource of general self-efficacy as a boundary condition for crossover and spillover. We find that expatriates with high self-efficacy experience no crossover between partner family role adjustment and expatriate family role adjustment, and positive spillover between their family role engagement and their work role engagement. By contrast, expatriates with low self-efficacy experience strong crossover between partner family role adjustment and expatriate family role adjustment, and negative spillover between their family role engagement and work role engagement. Our results suggest that the way in which the family domain influences expatriate work role engagement depends on general self-efficacy. We contribute to conservation of resources, crossover and spillover theories, and the work–family interface during expatriation. Our results also pinpoint organizational interventions to improve expatriates' work role engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]