Abstract:
A large and growing body of literature investigated the return of corporate
repatriates; the repatriation of academics has not yet been sufficiently
discussed in the literature. Particularly, in Sri Lanka, repatriation of academics
was unnoticed so far. About the repatriation of university academics, it is not
clear whether academic repatriates experience repatriation issues as corporate
repatriates. Therefore, this study investigated if academic repatriates
experience adjustment issues, and the influences of repatriates personal and
situational variables such as length of overseas assignment, the time passed
upon repatriation, cultural disparity, and age on repatriation adjustment. The
study was conducted with a group of 140 Sri Lankan academics and used ttest
and multiple regressions to test the proposed five hypotheses. For this
study, the researcher collected data from two groups of academics: one group
of academics are those who have no repatriation experiences, and the other
group of academics is those who have repatriation experiences. The second
group consists of academics (repatriates) who had been attached to a foreign
university or academic institution for more than one year, had been involved
in academic activities, and, at the survey date, had returned within the past
two years. Results indicated that academic repatriate‟s experiences less fit
with their home university compare to academics who do not have repatriation
experiences. Multiple regression analysis proved that repatriates‟ personal and
situational variables had no any significant impact on repatriation adjustment.
