The JGM BitBlog: Challenging the Transfer Paradigm - No Longer Fit for Purpose!
Joshua Haist, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
Philip St John Renshaw, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
Jennifer Robinson, University of Reading, Reading, UK
For years, international assignments (IAs) have been viewed as structured mechanisms for knowledge transfer an employee is sent out to deliver expertise or return with insights. This approach is based on the assumptions of linearity, role-based leadership and stable knowledge. These foundational ideas persist in both theory and practice, influencing how IAs are structured, evaluated, and justified.
Our research challenges this foundation, arguing that this perspective is no longer fit for purpose. It fails to reflect what knowledge is, how it emerges, and how leadership is actually practiced in the lived experience of global mobility. IAs are not straightforward transfers from "home" to "host," but complex, unfolding processes in which knowledge and leadership are co-produced-often unpredictably and through interaction rather than instruction. We view knowledge and leadership as a dynamic and evolving process, shaped by context, relationships, and lived experience. Leadership, in this view, is not something individuals possess, but something people enact together-often across hierarchies and in ways that are not easily measured.
This is where the metaphor of improvisation helps - not as decoration, but as a conceptual tool. Like a jazz ensemble, IAs involve people attuning to one another in unfamiliar environments, responding in real time, and creating new meaning through their performance itself. In this context, leadership is not about control or command; it is about enabling others, navigating ambiguity together, and adapting to new dynamics as they emerge.
We propose that IAs as processes that are constantly changing. These processes create, share and change knowledge through the interaction and collaboration of individuals. These knowledge dynamics begin before the assignment starts, change through real-life experiences, and often continue long after the formal return. It is shaped by shared understanding, mutual influence, and collaboration across hierarchical levels. Knowledge moves in many different ways, at different speeds and to different levels, and cannot be planned or measured.
We challenge long-standing assumptions of how knowledge is created, shared and moved in a linear way and guided by individual leaders. This process perspective more accurately reflects realty and the interconnected and developing nature of leadership and knowledge dynamics in global contexts. We suggest to rethink how IAs are designed and supported. Rather than focusing on knowledge as a deliverable, or leadership as a function of hierarchy, organizations should foster the conditions that enable interaction, trust, and collaboration. In doing so, organizations can create new and better ways of working. It also means understanding the often hidden, collaborative work of creating knowledge - across roles and time.
In short, IAs are not scripted performances directed from above. They are co-created, improvised collaborations. And it is in these moments-often uncertain, often relational-where leadership and knowledge dynamics truly take form.
To read the full article, please see:
Haist, J., Renshaw, P.S.J. and Robinson, J. (2025), "Empowering knowledge dynamics: a process ontology perspective on collaborative leadership in international assignments", Journal of Global Mobility, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 198-218. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-08-2024-0084" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-08-2024-0084
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Professor Jan Selmer, Ph.D.
Founding Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Global Mobility (JGM)
Department of Management, Aarhus University
E-mail:
selmer@mgmt.au.dkTwitter: @JanSelmer_JGM
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