Strangers in the Foreign Land: Exploring Cultural Minority Global Professionals’ Career Satisfaction

Abstract

Integrating trait activation theory and job embeddedness theory, we examined the influences of cultural intelligence, organizational and community embeddedness, and host country community diversity climate on cultural minority professionals (CMGPs)’ career satisfaction. Based on two distinct samples of CMGPs (169 Asian American Professionals in Study 1; 147 self-initiated expatriate academics in Study 2), we found that CMGPs’ cultural intelligence enhances CMGPs’ organizational and community embeddedness, which in turn increase CMGPs’ career satisfaction. We further found that low host country community diversity climate facilitates the importance of CQ as a predictor of CMGPs’ organizational and community embeddedness. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.