Abstract: Technology has removed many of the physical barriers to working together, yet many people feel more disconnected than ever. For international HRM, this is puzzling because our field has long treated distance – whether cultural, geographic, linguistic, or institutional in nature – as a structural feature of global work to be bridged. For example, the literatures on adjustment, boundary spanning, global leadership, virtual work, and inclusion have all mapped the behavioral, relational and technological mechanisms that help people connect across it. But distance in and of itself is not always detrimental and research has highlighted several upsides that distance can offer.

In this webinar, Reiche will argue that IHRM needs to move from a distance lens to a proximity lens. Drawing on two decades of research on global work and on his new book, Proximity (Bloomsbury, 2026), I define proximity not as maximal closeness but as a balance between people’s needs for belonging and for difference. Too little leaves people isolated and disconnected; too much erases the very differences global work depends on. Reiche will outline examples from research and practice for building proximity in the global work domain and close with open questions for a research agenda on proximity in IHRM.

About the speaker: B. Sebastian Reiche is professor of people management and faculty dean at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on how to navigate global and distributed forms of work, and has appeared in outlets such as Academy of Management Discoveries, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Organization Science, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Sebastian’s contributions have also featured in the international press, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and World Economic Forum. He is author of Proximity: How to Balance Belonging and Difference in Today’s Workplace (Bloomsbury, 2026) and serves as associate editor for Human Resource Management. At IESE, he has designed, directed and delivered executive education programs for global companies such as ACS Group, Boehringer Ingelheim, Deloitte, SAP, and Salesforce. He regularly blogs on the topic of global work.