Abstract
Today’s increasingly global marketplace is resulting in more organizations sending employees to work outside their home countries as expatriates. Consequently, identifying factors influencing expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment at work and performance has become an increasingly important issue for both researchers and firms. Drawing on Kim et al. (2008), this study examines the critical elements to expatriate success, which are the relationships between cultural intelligence, cross-cultural adjustment at work, and assignment-specific performance. One-hundred and fifty-one expatriates working within the energy sector, who were mainly located in the Middle East completed questionnaires, investigating: cultural intelligence (Cultural Intelligence Scale), cross-cultural adjustment (Expatriate Adjustment Scale), performance (Expatriate Contextual/Managerial Performance Skills), cultural distance (Kogut and Singh’ index), length of staying in the host country and international work experience. Findings indicated that the four cultural intelligence components were directly and indirectly (through cross-cultural adjustment at work) associated with performance. The positive relationship between motivational cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment at work was stronger when cultural distance was low, when expatriates were at the beginning of a new international assignment, and when they had lower experience. Organizations can greatly benefit from hiring cross-culturally intelligent expatriates for international assignments, providing their employees with pre-departure training programs aimed at increasing cultural intelligence, and giving them organizational resources and logistical help to support them.
Highlights
As globalization of trade encourages multinational corporations (MNCs) to operate in different geographic environments (Sambasivan et al 2013), talent mobility has become one of the key channels through which to develop global organizations’ competitive advantages (Tarique and Schuler 2010)
Results from confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the six-factor model outperformed all the alternative models (χ2[335] = 782.70, CFI = .78, TLI = .76, RMSEA = .09, SRMR = .10)
Contrary to what expected based on Kim et al (2008), CD is more likely to attenuate, rather than amplify, the positive effect of motivational CQ on work cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) in less culturally distant settings, such that the culturally intelligent expatriates are more likely to adjust to the host workplace and, perform well when CD is low
Summary
As globalization of trade encourages multinational corporations (MNCs) to operate in different geographic environments (Sambasivan et al 2013), talent mobility has become one of the key channels through which to develop global organizations’ competitive advantages (Tarique and Schuler 2010). This requires the presence of a cross-culturally competent workforce that can manage overseas subsidiaries and liaise with foreign affiliates (Froese and Peltokorpi 2011). Scholars have called for more research on the CQ dimensions (Ang et al 2011) as the four CQ components have been differently associated with specific intercultural effectiveness outcomes (see Rockstuhl and Van Dyne 2018 for a review)
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