An Integrative Model for Expatriates' Cross-cultural Adaptation in the Hospitality Industry

Abstract

The expatriates' knowledge and ideas acquired in host country are very useful assets, since their experiential knowledge could help the organization copy with similar potential problems. In one stream of studies on international human resource management, it was postulated that individual factors, job factors, organization culture factors have a strong influence on the adaptation of expatriates. Another research stream emphasized non-work factors. However, both individual factors and non-work factors appeared to be more important than any other factor on expatriates' adjustment. Of course, the high job-related technology skills or the cooperation within the organization also help facilitate expatriates' adjustment, but are not critical. The reasons for the expatriates' failures are shortage of unique individual competencies and the experienced cultural novelty. This paper integrates the two perspectives. To increase the efficiency of expatriates, the organization must first select the appropriate expatriates who can adapt themselves to the host culture and then develop the targeted cross-cultural trainingfor expatriates. Specifically, the expatriates' competencies are divided to two parts: stable competencies and dynamic competencies. It is important to note the useof cross-cultural training to transform these stable competencies to dynamic competencies and the roles of host country workforces as important mediators.