Locus of control and cross-cultural adjustment of expatriate managers

Abstract

International labour mobility is becoming a key feature of the globalising world. There is an increasing amount of literature on the success and failure conditions of migrant workers. A particular class of foreign workers is formed by so-called expatriates who are sent on a temporary basis (several years normally) by a parent company located in a given country to live and work in another country notably as an employee in a subsidiary abroad. This paper aims to investigate the performance of expatriate managers by explaining their cross-cultural adjustment potential from their personal management style features. These features are derived from the concept of locus of control in social learning theory in which two types of responses to challenges are distinguished: internals (controlling events themselves) and externals (following outside forces). Based on a sample of 43 individuals, our study concludes that managers with an internal locus of control are more successful in coping with the difficulties inherent in adjusting to a foreign culture.