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Expatriate support and success: A systematic review 67 Table 4.1: Keywords by their respective cluster. Social support Expatriate success Specificity of sample support performance expat* effectiveness sojourn* success inpat* failure transpat* attrition country national* retention global professional* intent* global worker* cognition* overseas assign* withdraw* international assign* commitment global assign* Note : An asterisk (*) means that the keyword was truncated and thus extended versions of that keyword were also included. Note : One hundred (1 x 10 x 10) keyword combinations were used. Table 4.2: The seven steps in the selection procedure. Specification Remaining studies Excluded studies Search results Web of Science 854 289 EBSCO 368 ProQuest 139 ScienceDirect 58 1 st step Unique studies (automatic) 764 -90 Unique studies (manual) 572 -192 2 nd step Full text English articles 496 -76 3 rd step Expatriate sample 271 -225 4 th step Success criteria 100 -171 5 th step Social support 64 -36 6 th step Empirical papers 37 -27 7 th step Manual search of JGM 39 2 4.2.2 Coding The 39 studies were then coded by the first author on four dimensions. First, it was determined which theories the articles had used to explain how social support may relate to the success of IAs. The mentioned theories clustered in three paradigms and articles were coded according to which of these they had used. Second, the success criteria examined by the articles were coded. Third, social support was coded according to the characteristics of its source. A basic distinction was made between organizations and their members. These members were furthermore coded for their proximity to the expatriate in terms of organizational hierarchy (i.e., supervisor, mentor, peer or subordinate), their geographical location (i.e., located in the home or host country), their employment status (i.e., host country national, inpatriate or expatriate) and their cultural background (same or different from expatriate). Finally, study design elements were examined, such as sample characteristics, the measures used and their raters.