Creating and leveraging social capital in international careers: a systematic review and future avenues

Scholars have long concurred that employees build social capital during international assignments and that this social capital can be leveraged in the form of positive individual and organizational outcomes. However, we lack a clear picture of how and under which conditions the social capital of international employees (IEs) is created and transferred to benefit individuals and their organizations. As a result, in practice, IEs’ social capital often leads to unintended negative consequences for both IEs and multinational corporations (MNCs). To address the identified shortcomings, we systematically review the literature on social capital in international careers published between 1973 and 2020. We develop an integrative framework in which we unravel the antecedents, creation mechanisms and outcomes of IEs’ social capital. Furthermore, we present three conditions that influence the creation of IEs’ social capital: organizational, job and cultural factors. We suggest that IEs’ networking behavior is a mediator of the acquisition of international support networks and conclude with recommendations for future research.