Career anchors and cross-cultural adjustment among expatriates in a non-profit organization.
| Verfasser | Wechtler, Heidi |
| Posten | RESEARCH ARTICLE - Report - Abstract |
Abstract Based on a sample of 189 expatriate managers working for a non-profit organization (NPO), we pursue two objectives in this paper. First, we address the lack of knowledge on expatriates working in the non-profit sector by exploring their dominant career anchors. Our analysis reveals that the dominant anchors are internationalism, dedication to a cause, and lifestyle. Second, we draw on person-environment fit theory to theorize and test the previously unexplored linkages between expatriates' career anchors and cross-cultural adjustment (CCA). Our analysis shows that different career anchors are positively associated with different dimensions of CCA: autonomy, security, dedication to a cause, and pure challenge with general living adjustment; dedication to a cause, pure challenge, and internationalism with interactional adjustment; and functional competence, managerial competence, pure challenge, and internationalism with work adjustment. Overall, the study is one of the first attempts to explore career anchors and their linkages to CCA among expatriates in NPOs.
Keywords Expatriates * Non-profit organization * Career anchors * Internal career * Cross-cultural adjustment
1 Introduction
Organizational expatriates (henceforth expatriates), i.e., employees who are temporary relocated by their organizations abroad for an assignment in a foreign country lasting up to a few years and who have the intention of returning to their home country afterwards (Collings et al. 2007), continue to be actively employed by organizations worldwide. It is estimated that by 2017, the number of expatriates will increase from the current 50.5 to almost 57 million. (1) Expatriates are crucial for their organizations because they often engage in strategically important tasks, e.g., taking up important positions in foreign subsidiaries, managing and controlling foreign subsidiaries, and/or developing new markets (Caligiuri 2000; Harzing 2001). Yet, they are also very costly, which makes organizations interested in understanding and predicting their success (see McNulty and Cieri 2011). Research has identified cross-cultural adjustment (CCA), that is, the degree of perceived psychological comfort in a new cultural environment (Black 1990; Black et al. 1991), as one of the key antecedents of success (e.g., Aycan 1997; Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al. 2005). Even though expatriates relocate abroad only for a limited period of time, they need to adjust well to the host culture to effectively function in their new environment, cooperate productively with locals, apply their competences and skills efficiently, and learn new things. Being well adjusted ultimately leads to higher general and job satisfaction and lower intentions to return home early (Shaffer and Harrison 1998; Takeuchi et al. 2002).
Existing literature on expatriates can be broadly divided into two main streams: The first primarily concerns what motivates or constrains an individual's willingness to expatriate (e.g., Dickmann et al. 2008; Dickmann and Mills 2010; Doherty et al. 2011) and the second deals with different aspects and antecedents of an expatriate's CCA (e.g., Shaffer et al. 1999; Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al. 2005; Peltokorpi and Froese 2012). Acknowledging the invaluable contributions of this literature, we see several areas where it can be complemented.
First, despite the extensive literature on the motives of expatriates to relocate abroad, such as monetary- and career-related (e.g., Dickmann et al. 2008; Doherty et al. 2011), family-related factors (e.g., Konopaske et al. 2009), or the desire to experience and live in new places and cultures (e.g., Stahl et al. 2002; Dickmann and Mills 2010), with only a few exceptions, the research remains silent (Suutari and Taka 2004; Cerdin and Le Pargneux 2010) on the role of expatriates' internal career characteristics, such as career anchors, in these processes. Nevertheless, internal or subjective career characteristics influence employees' behavior and attitudes in the workplace (e.g., Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Hall 1996; Schein 1996; Cappellen and Janssens 2005). For instance, it has been argued that congruence between an individual's career anchors and his/her current work environment determines whether he/she succeeds at the current work in terms of job performance and job satisfaction, or experiences anxiety, stress and tension (Feldman and Bolino 1996; Suutari and Taka 2004; Cerdin and Le Pargneux 2009). Moreover, the increasing prominence of "boundaryless" career orientations among expatriates underlines the growing importance of internal career characteristics for their career decisions as opposed to more traditional corporate incentives and career advancements (e.g., Stahl et al. 2002; Cerdin and Le Pargneux 2010). Therefore, more research is needed to better understand the role of expatriates' career anchors as one of the central internal career characteristics in their relocation decisions.
Second, only a few studies have hitherto explicitly attempted to examine the relationships between expatriates' motives to relocate and CCA (e.g., Froese 2012; Selmer and Lauring 2013). Importantly, these studies have focused exclusively on self-initiated academic expatriates. Froese (2012) qualitatively explored the relationships between their motivations to go abroad and CCA, whereas Selmer and Lauring (2013) examined the links between cognitive and affective reasons to expatriate and work adjustment. However, it appears that no prior study has empirically examined the relationships between specifically organizational career anchors of expatriates and different dimensions of CCA. The only (known to us) attempt is a conceptual contribution by Cerdin and Pargneux (2009), where the authors argue that congruence between expatriates' anchors and international assignment characteristics leads to better performance. However, the role of different career anchors in determining expatriates' CCA--as one of the key determinants of expatriates' success--has remained unexplored up to now.
Finally, the extant studies of expatriates' career anchors (Suutari and Taka 2004; Cerdin and Le Pargneux 2010) have focused exclusively on expatriates in for-profit organizations. However, considering the documented diversity of expatriates (e.g., Collings et al. 2007), more research on the differences between expatriates in for-profit and non-profit organizations is needed (NPO) (Oberholster et al. 2013). To the best of our knowledge, no study has explored career anchors of expatriates in NPOs. This is in line with the general lack of research on HRM (Fenwick 2005) and on expatriates (Selmer and Fenner 2009a, b) in international NPOs. Meanwhile, by the end of the last century, the non-profit sector had become the most rapidly growing of any internationalizing organizational sectors during the last 20 years (see Lindenberg 1999). Today, it employs a lot of people globally, including a large number of expatriates (Dahlgren et al. 2009). Because in contrast to for-profit organizations, NPOs tend to exhibit value rationality, often based on a strong ideology, rather than economic rationality (Hudson and Bielefeld 1997; Fenwick 2005), they are likely to attract more intrinsically-motivated expatriates who believe in the organization's mission or an opportunity to actualize their individual values (Oberholster et al. 2013). Meanwhile, the organizations themselves often lack knowledge about corporate-style management approaches (Fenwick 2005). As a result, the turnover rate among expatriates in NPOs is high, not least because of the difficulties in adjustment related to the quality and quantity of pre-departure preparations, the inadequate level of compensation, and the limited ability of NPOs to invest resources into providing high-quality continuous organizational support (Fenwick 2005). Hence, the context of expatriates in NPOs appears to be well suited for exploring how expatriates' internal career orientations relate to their CCA and needs to be examined.
Based on a sample of 189 French expatriates working for an NPO, this study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it identifies the dominant career anchors possessed by organizational expatriates employed by an NPO. In this way, it adds to the literature on international NPOs (e.g., Fenwick 2005; Dahlgren et al. 2009; Oberholster et al. 2013) and, more specifically, on expatriates in these organizations (e.g., Selmer and Fenner 2009a, b) by shedding light on what career anchors characterize this hitherto scarcely studied group of employees. Second, the study theorizes and examines the previously unexplored associations between expatriates' career anchors and CCA empirically. By doing so, it complements the literature on expatriates' CCA (e.g., Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al. 2005; Froese 2012; Selmer and Lauring 2013) by increasing our understanding of how expatriates' long-term internal career characteristics influence their current ability to adjust to new cultural environments, thereby increasing their chances to succeed in assignments.
The paper is organized as follows. In the following sections, we provide an overview of the career anchors theory, explore our sample to identify dominant career anchors among expatriates in an NPO, and develop hypotheses to examine associations between expatriates' career anchors and CCA. We then test the hypotheses empirically using canonical correlation analyses complemented by structural equation models (SEM). Finally, we discuss our findings.
2 Theoretical Background
2.1 The Theory of Career Anchors
Over the last couple of decades, the focus in career research has been shifting towards assigning more importance to internal or subjective characteristics of one's career (e.g., Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Hall 1996; Cappellen and Janssens 2005). A person's career is increasingly seen as "the evolving sequence of a person's work experiences over...
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