Host Country Nationals' Role Overload and Perspective Taking as Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing: The Moderating Role of Host Country nationals' Agreeableness

Abstract

Host country nationals (HCNs) possess unique and valuable knowledge which is critical to expatriate and multinational company (MNC) success. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we explore the negative effect of role overload on HCNs' knowledge sharing toward expatriates. Using two waves of data collected from 512 HCNs, we find HCNs' role overload inhibits their knowledge sharing behavior via perspective taking. The results also show that HCNs' personality agreeableness buffers the negative relationship between role overload and perspective taking. Our study provides significant theoretical and practical implications to expatriate literature.