Language Skills and Cross-cultural Adjustment: The Role of Expatriates' Fear of Terror

Abstract

Prior research has identified language skills as potentially beneficial for a variety of outcomes during an expatriate assignment, such as relationship building, interpersonal communication, and effective functioning at home and at work. Based on the expatriate adjustment model by Black et al. (1991), integrating it with social identity theory-based literature on the influence of language proficiency on expatriate adjustment, and applying this conceptualization to the context of hostile environments, we develop a set of hypotheses to explain the distinct influences of host country language and of English language skills on cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) of expatriates living in terrorism-endangered environments. Using data from 105 expatriates currently located in environments that can be considered as risky, we show that host country language proficiency influences CCA positively, while English language proficiency has no effect on CCA. Moreover, we investigate the expatriate’s fear of terror, showing that host country language proficiency increases terror-sensitivity, which, in turn negatively influences CCA. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and for human resource management in multinational enterprises. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on expatriation to dangerous environments as well as to the literature on the role of language in IB.