Cultural intelligence, cross-cultural adaptation and expatriate performance: a study with expatriates living in Brazil

Inácia Maria Nunes, Bruno Felix, Lorene Alexandre Prates
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引用次数: 36

Abstract

Developing a competitive workforce abroad is a relevant challenge to organizations with multinational activities. In view of this, added to the high costs associated with expatriation, it is necessary to identify the factors that facilitate a satisfactory performance of executives in international assignments. Thus, the purpose of this work is to investigate the relationship between cultural intelligence, cross-cultural adaptation and expatriates performance. Based on a sample of 217 expatriates from 26 countries living in Brazil, the research reveals a positive association between cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adaptation, and the latter with expatriates’ performance. However, the direct relationship between cultural intelligence and expatriates performance was not significant. The results also revealed an indirect relationship between cultural intelligence and expatriates performance mediated by cross-cultural adaptation. Thus, we suggest that cultural intelligence converts itself into the ability of the expatriate to better adapt to the new culture, which then results in performance. Based on Allport's Contact Theory (Pettigrew, 1998), which has the assumption that increased interactions between members of different ethnic groups can lead to increased mutual understanding, reduce hostilities, prejudices and the formation of friendships between groups in different social contexts (Kim, 2012, Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006), we thus suggest that this transformation process is facilitated and powered by the increase of interactions between expatriates and the host country nationals. Suggestions for future research and for practice are presented.

文化智力、跨文化适应和外派人员表现:对居住在巴西的外派人员的研究
发展一支具有竞争力的海外劳动力队伍是跨国企业面临的一个相关挑战。有鉴于此,再加上与外派有关的高昂费用,有必要查明有助于行政人员在国际外派中取得令人满意成绩的因素。因此,本研究的目的是探讨文化智力、跨文化适应和外派人员绩效之间的关系。基于来自26个国家的217名居住在巴西的外籍人士的样本,该研究揭示了文化智力和跨文化适应之间的正相关关系,而后者与外籍人士的表现有关。然而,文化智力与外派人员绩效之间的直接关系并不显著。研究结果还揭示了文化智力与外派人员绩效之间的间接关系,这种关系是由跨文化适应介导的。因此,我们认为文化智力可以转化为外派人员更好地适应新文化的能力,从而提高绩效。基于Allport的接触理论(Pettigrew, 1998),该理论假设不同种族群体成员之间的互动增加可以导致不同社会背景下群体之间相互理解的增加,减少敌意,偏见和友谊的形成(Kim, 2012; Pettigrew和Tropp, 2006),因此,我们建议,外籍人士和东道国国民之间互动的增加促进和推动了这一转变过程。最后对今后的研究和实践提出了建议。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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