In the last chapter we selectively reviewed research on international students, one of the most frequently studied groups of sojourners. Persons going abroad for commercial and business reasons constitute another major group of short-term cross-cultural travellers. These are individuals who have usually been sent by their employers to work and live temporarily in countries where the organisation is conducting business through a branch, a subsidiary, or a joint venture structure.
Although each of these arrangements differs in various significant ways, from the perspective of the sojourner the psychological problems are very similar. Their time abroad will have a finite limit, after which they will return home; they will have clear work-related assignments that they are expected to accomplish; they will have to be able to interact successfully with their local counterparts to achieve their goals; they and their families, if they have any, will experience the dislocation associated with exposure to unfamiliar cultural settings; and their career path may be affected, positively or negatively, by choosing or agreeing to undertake service abroad.
Although work-related cross-cultural travel in the broadest sense includes all occupational levels from factory and domestic staff to highly skilled technicians, professionals and managers, the present chapter will only deal with those at the executive end of the spectrum. There are two reasons for this. First, the literature on the so-called guest arbeiter group is rather sketchy. Furthermore, many of the persons in that category are often in reality immigrants or intending immigrants, and in that sense do not fit our definition of sojourners, that is, unambiguously temporary culture travellers. Second, there is a large and growing literature on what we will call the expatriate experience, with most of the studies having been conducted with workers in managerial and professional roles.
There are several reasons why there is considerable research interest in the expatriate experience: there are large numbers of expatriates; they provide the human link in international trade; and their effectiveness has a direct impact on the profitability and often the viability of international commerce. That is why business travellers are also the sojourner group most likely to receive at least some pre-departure culture orientation and training and to undergo psychological and other assessment procedures as part of their selection for overseas assignments. The general training and selection literature will be reviewed in
Chapter 11 and will not be explicitly referred to here, with the one or two exceptions that are particularly germane to the expatriate experience.
Our aim in this chapter is to describe the expatriate experience and to identify those features that are unique to this group of sojourners. In keeping with the ABC (affect, behaviour, cognitions) approach adopted throughout this book, we will review studies that deal with the general adaptation of expatriates to their unfamiliar sociocultural environments as well as identify specific work-related adaptation processes. In the case of business travellers, unlike immigrants and most students, objective performance criteria are easily accessible. These are not confined to economic indicators, but also include traditional industrial/
organisational indices such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment and labour turnover. In other words, there are measurable outcome variables that can be used to quantify sociocultural adaptation. And we will again attempt to identify the personal and social conditions that serve as barriers to successful adaptation and those that enhance it.
Topics specific to the expatriate experience include the acquisition, or at least the expression, of appropriate work-related cognitive styles and responses. Much of an executive’s day-to-day activities involve negotiating with business partners and influencing and leading subordinates, all processes which may have idiosyncratic culture-specific forms. This consideration also relates to the more general finding that managerial practices in most cases do not transfer easily across cultural boundaries. The role of the spouse in influencing both the affective adjustment of the expatriate, as well as the person’s job related performance, is also a major issue. Another key subject is the re-entry process. On returning home, expatriates not only have to readjust to the general cultural milieu of a country from which they might have been absent for several years, but they also have to reintegrate themselves with their employing organisation.
Another topic on which there is a nascent literature relates to the growing number of business sojourners who are women and the special problems that female expatriates encounter. Finally, we will also briefly review the literature on inpatriation, where multinationals bring indigenous managers from their local branches to the head office for training and then send them back to manage the subsidiary operation.
CULTURAL DISTANCE, WORK PERFORMANCE AND ADAPTATION OF BUSINESS SOJOURNERS
A robust finding in the culture-contact literature is that the adjustment and coping difficulties of sojourners increase with the distance between their culture of origin and that of the host society. As this literature was reviewed previously, only studies specifically relevant to business travellers will be cited in the present discussion. The role of cultural distance in expatriate adjustment is evident in all three of the components of our ABC model. It affects how people feel about their life and work abroad; how adept they are in achieving their
personal as well as work-related goals; and the veracity and utility of their general as well as work-related perceptions and decisions. All of these factors are related to effective strategic thinking and are important ingredients for business success.
The key underlying practical problem is that human resource management and business practices do not easily migrate across cultural boundaries (Abo, 1994;
Bochner, 1992; Graen and Wakabayashi, 1994; Kenny and Florida, 1993; Martin and Beaumont, 1998; Oliver and Wilkinson, 1992; Shadur et al., 1995). What succeeds in New York may not work in Sydney and will probably fail in Beijing or Tokyo. In a recent review of the literature Tayeb (1999) concluded that some management practices, such as flexible working hours, have been easier to transfer than others. Some have had to be modified, such as quality circles and teamwork (an issue we will deal with in more detail later). And some, like morning ceremonies that are a feature of many Japanese companies, have steadfastly resisted transfer.
More technically, none of the following, largely North-American-derived assumptions about work-related human nature are universal: preferences for a consultative leadership style (versus a structured, directive command system);
egalitarian interpersonal relationships between employees occupying different levels in the hierarchy (versus being highly conscious of and emphasising differences in status, salary and seniority); an emphasis on task achievement (versus maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations); the use of direct and immediate performance feedback (versus avoiding giving frank feedback because it might damage the employee’s face and lower the worker’s loyalty to the organisation); reliance on written and unwritten rules (versus a more informal regulatory system); the treatment and reward of employees based on individual performance (versus being integrated into a team); the practice of negotiation based on rational, factual grounds (versus emotional appeals associated with interpersonal considerations and subjective feelings); the selection, recruitment and promotion of employees on the basis of merit (versus taking into account the personal relationship between the worker and the employer); the acceptance of a psychological contract setting out an explicit formal relationship between the worker and the organisation, as captured by the phrase ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’, together with the right of the worker and the employer to sever the connection when expedient (versus an association that is modelled on the concept of family, emphasising mutual obligations and long term relationships through good times and bad (Adler, 1997; Brewster et al., 1996; Budhwar and Sparrow, 1998; Earley, 1993; Guzzo, Noonan and Elron, 1994; Hofstede, 1991; Kashima and Callan, 1994; Redding, Norman and Schlander, 1994; Triandis, 1994b; Weiss, 1996).
Because these assumptions determine many management practices, it is important to know whether they hold in particular circumstances. The practical consequences of cross-cultural diversity in values are captured by Hofstede’s (1998) assertion that ‘Nobody can think globally… Management in general, and
personnel management in particular, are culturally constrained’ (p. 7). This poses a dilemma for expatriate managers employed by multinational corporations. On the one hand, they are expected to put into effect uniform corporate-wide policies and practices whose functional benefits may be lost in certain subsidiaries. On the other hand, if they do take into account cultural differences and change their practices accordingly, this may result in an unacceptable dilution of the corporate culture and the centralised control systems which drive their particular multinational organisation (e.g. Martinez and Jarillo, 1991;
Muralidharan, 1998; Snell, 1992). This issue is never far below the surface in the international management literature.
Another problem facing expatriates is that significant changes in workforce demographics have occurred as a result of globalisation. Increasingly, work groups are becoming culturally diverse (Erez, 1994; Milliken and Martins, 1996;
Triandis, Kurowski and Gelfand, 1994). This is true not only for those that the expatriates manage but also the teams to which they belong. In many cases co- workers will also be expatriates who hail from other parts of the world.
Research has shown that the greater the cultural heterogeneity of a work group, defined as the greater the relative cultural distance among group members, the greater the likelihood that this will have adverse consequences on group performance. At the very least, such groups will be more difficult to manage.
Heterogeneity, however, does have some advantages. In particular, heterogeneous groups tend to be more creative, largely because they bring a variety of perspectives to the task in hand. But research has also shown that cultural diversity may lead to lower levels of interpersonal harmony, more stress and greater turnover (Adler, 1997; Bochner and Hesketh, 1994; Jackson, 1992;
O’Reilly, Caldwell and Barnett, 1989; Storey, 1991; Thomas, 1999; Triandis, Kurowski and Gelfand, 1994). The costs and benefits of diversity have led commentators such as Cox and Blake (1991) and Cox, Lobel and McLeod (1991) to suggest that if companies can learn how to manage such variety, they would gain a competitive advantage by being able to harness the positive aspects of heterogeneity.
To illustrate some of the problems of cultural heterogeneity in the work place, as the pace of globalisation intensifies, an increasing number of middle managers are reporting to superiors from dissimilar cultures. In an article provocatively titled ‘Would you trust your foreign manager?’ Banai and Reisel (1999) compared the attitudes of British managers working in a British bank in London with expatriate managers in banks in Britain, the United States, The Netherlands, and Israel. They found that trust between managers and their supervisors was greater in homogeneous than heterogeneous work settings. The authors interpret their findings in terms of the degree of cultural similarity among the individuals surveyed. These findings are significant for the culture-distance hypothesis in that from a global perspective, the distance between the participants was only moderate, suggesting that the effect would be greater in more heterogeneous work settings.
Leadership style
The major functions of expatriate personnel are to manage, coordinate, motivate and generally direct the activities of local subordinates and colleagues. The explicit behaviours that are assumed to serve these functions, however, may vary considerably across cultures. Unfortunately, as in the case of intercultural education, management practices that diverge significantly from Euro-centric norms and standards are often perceived as poor replacements. Although more recent research has incorporated an emic perspective on these issues, some of the old ‘colonial’ attitudes still remain in the investigation of organisational processes.
Leadership is a case in point. From its first appearance in the literature, it was conceived as a process that involves a power relationship between persons designated as leaders and their followers (McGregor, 1944). Effective leadership was defined in terms of the amount of compliance or acquiescence leaders could elicit from their subordinates. A great deal of subsequent research compared and contrasted the effects of various types of leadership behaviours (for a review see Hollander, 1985).
The main contrast was and largely still is between the authoritarian/ autocratic versus participative/democratic approach, based on whether leaders make all of the decisions themselves or whether they share power with their subordinates.
Another major distinction is between task-oriented versus people-oriented styles, also sometimes described as initiating structure versus consideration. These terms refer to whether leaders concentrate on getting the job done irrespective of any adverse human relations consequences or whether they regard it as important to foster job satisfaction and achieve a cohesive, stable and committed work force. There is wide agreement that effective leaders, as measured by followers’
job satisfaction and productivity, will be high on both consideration and structure; however, almost all of the research has been conducted in Western cultural contexts.
The models described have been called contingency theories because they define the leadership process in terms of the contingencies that shape the relationship between leaders and followers. Contingency models tend to ignore, or at least greatly de-emphasise, the personality traits and characteristics of the leader, a position that is inconsistent with lay notions of charismatic leadership.
Recently, however, Bernard Bass has proposed a model which makes explicit reference to both the characteristics of the leader and the leader-follower relationship (e.g. Bass, 1997).
Bass makes a distinction between transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leadership is based on the exchange principle; that is, material or symbolic rewards and resources under the control of the leader are offered to followers in return for compliance (Hollander and Offermann, 1990).
Transformational leadership is based on the ability of a leader to motivate followers to work for goals which go beyond immediate self-interest for the good
of the group, organisation or country. Unlike transactional leaders, transformational leaders inspire their followers in the sharing of vision, symbolism and sacrifice.
According to Bass (Bass and Avolio, 1994), transformational leaders are more effective than leaders who follow a contingent reward strategy. Furthermore, Bass proposes that this advantage is common across all cultures and that transformational leadership is superior in both autocratic and participative systems. It is also supposed to transcend organisational boundaries. Clearly, if this conclusion were warranted, it would have huge practical implications for the day-to-day behaviour of expatriate executives. It gives a clear ‘No’ to the question as to whether one should lead differently in different cultural settings.
However, to some cultural observers the emphasis on vision and sacrifice smacks of hypocrisy and manipulation. Bass (1997) reviews an impressive amount of empirical support for his thesis, but most of the studies cited are by workers using his Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Still, in the final analysis the issue will be decided by empirical research, and there is a considerable amount of theory and some evidence in favour of an emic, culturally specific approach to leadership.
In particular, there is strong support for the view that collectivist values (see Chapter 1 for a discussion of the individualistic/collectivist distinction) are congruent with transformational leadership, whereas an individualistic outlook would be more congruent with a transactional approach. That is because individualists are more driven by self-interest and short term personal goals, whereas collectivists value their long term association with their reference groups. Collectivists tend to inhibit their personal aspirations if these conflict with the goals of their group, precisely what transformational leaders require of their subordinates.
Collectivist cultures are also characterised by high power distance, which would make them more willing to accept their leader’s beliefs and vision. And a recent study co-authored by one of Bass’s major collaborators supported at least some of these implications (Jung and Avolio, 1999). The study compared the performance of individualists with collectivists who were either led by a transactional or a transformational leader. The dependent variables were the number of ideas generated to solve a management problem and the practicality of these solutions. The study found that individualists generated more recommendations in the transactional than in the transformational leadership condition whereas the performance of the collectivists was superior in the transformational leadership condition. The study clearly demonstrated that individuals will respond to the way they are led as a function of the congruence of their cultural orientation with the leadership style they are experiencing. This conclusion echoes previous findings in the literature (e.g. Earley, 1989; Erez and Somech, 1996; Wagner, 1995) and has important implications for managing cultural diversity in the work place.
In a recent study by Eylon and Au (1999), East Asian (high power distance) and Canadian and Northern European (low power distance) MBA students were randomly assigned to an in-basket management simulation (Hakstian, Woolsey and Schroeder, 1986) that varied in the extent to which the participants were
‘empowered’, that is, the extent to which they were given information, responsibility and trust. The dependent variables were job satisfaction and work performance. Results showed that all participants, irrespective of their culture of origin, were more satisfied when working under empowered circumstances.
However, work performance did vary as a function of the interaction between the participants’ culture and the extent to which they were empowered. High power distance, empowered participants performed less well than empowered workers from low power distance cultures, thus confirming that high power distance workers operate more effectively under a benevolent autocratic leadership style whereas low power distance workers respond better to a more decentralised and consultative system.
Self-managing teams
A related issue is the increasing reliance in Western organisations on self- managing work teams. These changes in work practice are based on the belief that if workers are given greater freedom to make decisions affecting the way in which they do their jobs, this will promote feelings of ownership about the tasks they are performing and should lead to higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. There is also the assumption that decisions which are made closer to the coal-face are better able to deal with any issues and problems as they arise, rather than deliberations which occur at more remote board-room levels.
The rise in self-managing groups is consistent with another modern management trend, the move towards organisational structures with flattened hierarchies. The term ‘semi-autonomous work groups’ is also sometimes used in this context and is a key element in the Tavistock Institute’s Sociotechnical Systems (STS) model of organisational functioning. The strength of STS is that it is explicitly derived from a systematic set of theoretical principles, namely open systems theory. STS was developed soon after the end of the Second World War by some of the great pioneers of the human relations movement in industrial psychology, including Fred Emery, Philip Herbst, A.K.Rice, Einar Thorsrud, and Eric Trist. In particular, they used STS as the theoretical basis for their applied interventions to introduce organisational change and development (for a recent review see Fox, 1995; Pasmore, 1995; Scarbrough, 1995).
There is no doubt that replacing hierarchical structures with semi-autonomous interlocking work groups is a highly effective strategy in the right circumstances.
It increased productivity, job satisfaction, quality, safety, customer service and organisational commitment in many of the projects in which it was introduced (Pasmore, 1988; Wall et al., 1986). In an article titled ‘Whither industrial psychology…in a changing world of work?’ Cascio (1995) explicitly refers to