Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine the factors contributing to expatriate adjustment to life in Malaysia. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and previous research, the independent variables of cultural intelligence, language ability, open-mindedness, tenure in Malaysia, previous overseas experience and monthly income, are used in this study to predict expatriate adjustment. A survey questionnaire was developed and analysis done on 80 expatriates from four industries in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Results of regression analysis using the PROCESS software showed that cultural intelligence, language ability open-mindedness, tenure in Malaysia and gender explained 76.2% of the variance in expatriate adjustment in Malaysia. Furthermore, tenure in Malaysia moderated cultural intelligence. However, previous overseas assignments and monthly income did not have any relationships with expatriate adjustment. The applicability of the conservation of resources theory to explain expatriate adjustment is clearly established in this study as all the variables that are significant predictors of expatriate adjustment are resources.
Highlights
The term expatriate or expat refers to a temporary immigrant crossing the border of their country to another country, changing his place of residence and work location (Andersen, Bergdolt, Margenfeld & Dickmann, 2014)
Sri Ramalu, Chuah & Che Rose (2011) found that cultural intelligence (CI) had a positive relationship with cross-cultural adjustment in Malaysia
In order to determine the tenure in Malaysia needed to produce expatriate adjustment, we examine the output from PROCESS and find that the outputs do not contain 0 when the tenure in Malaysia is 2.75 and more
Summary
The term expatriate or expat refers to a temporary immigrant crossing the border of their country to another country, changing his place of residence and work location (Andersen, Bergdolt, Margenfeld & Dickmann, 2014). Expatriation is a voluntary movement of people who decide to leave their home country and work in another country. In the terminology of international human resource management, expatriate usually refers to managers that are sent abroad by parent companies to their subsidiaries overseas. Foreign managers from the parent company facilitate tighter control over foreign branches. In today's global economy, organizations require expatriates to spend time working internationally to spread talent across borders. Expatriates are usually sent abroad to work on short-term, medium term or long-term contracts to complete organizational goals
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