Business expatriates' cross‐cultural adaptation and their job performance

Abstract

While a positive relationship between the cross‐cultural adaptation and job performance of business expatriates is widely assumed and intuitively plausible, empirical studies do not consistently confirm this relationship. The current quantitative study investigated expatriates sent to and from C hina, two hitherto neglected but increasingly important groups. The sample of more than 800 participants is considerably larger than in previous studies of other types of expatriates. The study, in the C hina‐based contexts, confirms the existence of links between cross‐cultural adaptation, job performance and other factors. It is also shown, among other relationships reported on here, that expatriates accompanied by their partners or family members display better cross‐cultural adaptation and job performance. Length of assignment is shown – counter‐intuitively – to be only weakly related to adaptation and performance, and, surprisingly, expatriation experience – often regarded as predictive of expatriate effectiveness – to be unrelated to cross‐cultural adaptation and job performance. The implications of the findings for expatriate selection, training, and assignment management are discussed.

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