To Stay or to Leave: The Turnover Intentions of International Academics at Japanese Universities

Abstract

The study is devoted to investigating the turnover intentions of international academics at Japanese universities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 full-time international academics in Japan. The interview data were coded and analyzed through an inductive process based on a four-stage procedure. The study suggests that although many international academics perceived themselves as tokenized symbols, stimulated by the determinants ranging in the dimensions of ease of movement, internal environmental factors, and external environmental factors, the majority of international academics were more inclined to remain in Japan. The study fills in the research gap regarding international academics’ turnover intentions, it also challenges and enriches Matier’s (1990) claim, highlighting that only when faculty members perceived ease of mobility and high internal and external environmental benefits, would they terminate their employment. Implications for policymakers, scholars and university administrators are offered for future studies and institutional practices.

The Institutional and Social Support Survey (ISS‐10): Quantifying international faculty language support

“…Marginalisation and anomie appear to be widespread, particularly among early career faculty (Brotherhood & Patterson, 2023;Morley et al, 2019;Sakurai & Mason, 2022. Researchers have found that international faculty are often motivated to remain in Japan (Chen & Chen, 2023), but struggle to effectively negotiate their broader integration (Chen, 2022a) with Japanese language ability being a mediating factor (Chen, 2022b). Prior research has shown that language ability is a defining factor when it comes to international academics work roles and opportunities for advancement (Huang, 2018a(Huang, , 2018b.…”

“…Recently, attention has turned to the ongoing challenge of retaining international faculty (Kim et al, 2022;Luczaj, 2022;Pustelnikovaite, 2021;Spitzer & Zhou, 2018). First among these challenges is a reported lack of integration into their host institutions (Brotherhood & Patterson, 2023;Chen & Chen, 2023;Hoang, 2020) which is attributed to several factors, including marginalisation on campus (Chen & Zhu, 2022;Munene, 2014), power imbalances between local and international faculty (Van Der Wende, 2015) and, particularly in non-Anglophone contexts, linguistic challenges (Gress & Shin, 2020;Huang, 2018b). Evidence also suggests that, while efforts are made to attract international faculty, institutional support for faculty integration is rare and ad hoc (Jepsen et al, 2014).…”