Abstract
Driven by fast-growing economies worldwide, the number of international construction projects is booming, and employing expatriates has inevitably become a strategy used by construction firms. However, stress arising from expatriate assignments can lead to early return, assignment failure, and staff turnover, causing in significant losses to an organisation. Extensive research has focused on the effectiveness of coping behaviours in relation to stress. However, studies investigating the antecedents of coping are rare. The limited studies to date tend to focus on content-based motivations (identifying what), instead of on how coping behaviours can be motivated in the stress management process (identifying how). Focus on expatriate construction professionals (ECPs) is further limited. Hence, this study aims to investigate from a process theory perspective the role of motivation in the stress management process. Using a qualitative interview study approach, involving 22 in-depth interviews, this study first identifies the content of motivation, coping behaviours, performance, and stress in the context of Hong Kong ECPs working on cross-cultural projects in China; it then unveils and explains the associations between the identified variables. Based on the results, stakeholders are recommended to review pre-departure training, so as to ensure that key elements such as personal awareness of stress (cognitive, affective, and physical), expectancies of coping strategies on stress (adaptive or maladaptive), and expectancies of the influence of stress on performance are covered.
Highlights
Globalisation is fostering the interdependence of global economies, but is increasing the demand for expatriates worldwide
expatriate construction professionals (ECPs) with different professional roles in selected projects were interviewed individually individually so so as as to toallow allowindividual individualvariation variationwithin withinthe thesame sameproject projectenvironment environmentto tobe becaptured, captured, in order to comprehend the effects of the different kinds of tasks for which they were responsible in order to comprehend the effects of the different kinds of tasks for which they were responsible and and to allow a comprehensive view of the stress management process they experienced
According to the conceptual model developed based on previous related studies (e.g., Leung et al [18] for stress-performance, Lazarus and Folkman [21] for coping behaviors, and Vroom [28] for motivation), an initial list of keywords was firstly developed under different categories
Summary
Globalisation is fostering the interdependence of global economies, but is increasing the demand for expatriates worldwide. The globalising economy is resulting in more and more international projects, leading to an increased demand for expatriates [1]. This is true for the construction industry, especially in rapidly developing countries like China and India where there are a growing number of global projects demanding high-quality expertise and technology. Employing expatriates has inevitably become a strategy used by many construction firms, those striving to construct innovative buildings to international standards.
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