Investigating Expatriate Adjustment with Cultural Sensemaking: The Case of Expatriates in Australia

Abstract

The scholarship on expatriate management and specifically on expatriate adjustment has paid little attention to expatriates’ day- to-day experiences in their host organisations and to the contexts in which this experience takes place despite the numerous calls for more contextualised studies in international management research. This paper is based upon an exploratory empirical research among French and American financial auditor expatriates in Australia. First, it sheds light on the areas of difference encountered by the expatriates in their new work environment in Australia, thus offering to deepen the domain of expatriate adjustment to work. To do so, it emphasises, in two distinct case studies, the work experiences of French and American expatriates in Australia. Second, drawing upon the notion of cultural sensemaking, this paper offers to explain why the American and French expatriates’ experiences of adjustment are different and argue for the importance of taking cultural contexts into account when studying expatriate adjustment.