Recognizing the important role of self-initiated expatriates in effective global talent management

•Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) represent a significant part of the global talent pool.•Thus far neither companies nor academics have given due consideration to SIEs.•Global organizations and SIEs share common interests that should be fostered.•The paper provides guidance on how to include SIEs throughout main areas of TM.•It suggests future research paths to academics, pointing to exploration-worthy fields.

The effective management of talent on a global scale represents a critical challenge for today's organizations. Beyond considerations about traditional company-assigned expatriates, this paper provides a valuable examination of global talent management issues involving self-initiated expatriates, an important source of global talent increasingly available in host country labor markets that has only relatively recently come to the attention of researchers. The paper discusses how central elements of talent management (i.e., identifying, recruiting, and selecting talent from the external labor market; developing employees; managing talent flows; ensuring retention of talented employees) can apply to the effective utilization of self-initiated expatriates, with direct implications for guiding the future work of practitioners and researchers alike.