All globally mobile employees (GMEs) share a common propensity to experience loneliness when they relocate to a new country where they have yet to establish social connections. To better understand how GMEs combat this feeling, we offer a conceptual process model grounded in conservation of resources (COR) theory to describe how they achieve social integration. The process begins with an assessment of GMEs’ desired versus perceived social relations, with most perceiving a relational deficiency or loneliness. This then triggers an audit of available social resources, which we differentiate in terms of source (personal vs. contextual) and stability (enduring vs. transient) to develop a typology of resources. Depending on the availability of resources, GMEs will follow one of three resource-management pathways to become socially integrated. Those who choose an expansion pathway will achieve what we refer to as deep-level (authentic) social integration and those who follow a protection pathway will attain surface-level (functional) social integration. The underutilization pathway is an interim route that may lead to either a resource-expansion or resource-protection pathway depending on changes in the availability of resources. Our iterative and recursive cyclical process model has implications for international management research, workplace loneliness studies, and COR theory.

所有全球流动员工 (GME) 在搬迁到尚未建立​​社交联系的新国家时都有一个共同的倾向，即感到孤独。为了更好地理解 GME 如何对抗这种感觉，我们提供了一个基于资源保护 (COR) 理论的概念过程模型来描述他们如何实现社会融合。该过程首先评估 GME 期望的社会关系与感知的社会关系，其中大多数人感知到关系缺陷或孤独。然后，这会触发对可用社会资源的审核，我们根据来源（个人与情境）和稳定性（持久与短暂）来区分这些资源，以开发资源类型。根据资源的可用性，GME 将遵循三种资源管理途径之一来融入社会。那些选择扩张路径的人将实现我们所说的深层（真正的）社会融合，而那些走保护路径的人将实现表层（功能性）的社会融合。未充分利用途径是一种临时途径，根据资源可用性的变化，可能会导致资源扩张或资源保护途径。我们的迭代和递归循环过程模型对国际管理研究、工作场所孤独研究和 COR 理论具有重要意义。