Expatriate compensation in contemporary organizations

This chapter summarizes major insights and theoretical considerations underpinning existing research and practice related to expatriate compensation, as well as common challenges. We situate existing research and practice within the current global influences of COVID-19 and the movement around racial inequality. In doing so we seek to draw out the taken-for-granted assumptions and limitations in the existing literature and present ideas on how the field should be developed in the future to respond to these. In taking a critical approach to expatriate compensation and the assumptions and dominant approaches which underpin it, we consider where and for whom compensation models are developed and decisions are made, and how social and racial hierarchies are reflected and perpetuated through these traditional approaches. We show how COVID-19 and the global movement around racial inequality are requiring and demanding new approaches to global mobility, and how expatriate compensation is a key part of this.