Enhancing Expatriation Effectiveness: The Mitigating Effect of Attachment Security on Perceived Threat in Intercultural Conflict

As companies expand into foreign markets, there is an increasing need for expatriation activities to manage human resources, maintain consistency in business operations and align the work processes across different geographic locations. For instance, the percentage of companies with more than 1,000 expatriates worldwide increased from 12% in 2001 to 49% in 2013 (Cigna, 2013). Despite such growing trends, cultural adjustment remains a critical barrier to retaining expatriates and receiving effective performance. According to a survey by InterNations (2014), less than half of China’s expatriates indicated they were satisfied with their lives during their stay. In particular, many expatriates find settling in and family life difficult and this is evident in many other developing countries, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, as host countries. This finding is consistent with the academic literature that spousal and family adjustment plays a critical role in expatriate adjustment and retention (Black & Stephens, 1989).Past research on expatriate adjustment has primarily focused on the effects of personality, and job-related and organizational factors, and has not explored the challenges from the perspective of adult attachment security and intercultural conflict. This proposal draws on theories from social psychology and organizational behavior to understand the psychological conditions under which expatriates can adjust successfully in the host country. We theorize that a major challenge of expatriate performance and retention is the extent to which expatriates can constructively manage and resolve interpersonal conflicts with their peers and subordinates from the host country. While conflicts and disagreements are common in intercultural interactions, expatriates’ appraisal of the behaviors of the counterparts in terms of task-based differences instead of threats and intimidations would be conducive to constructive conflict management.Our major hypothesis is that an expatriate’s adult attachment security may ameliorate the psychological threats experienced by expatriates through intercultural conflicts and hence promote the use of cooperative and constructive conflict resolution strategies (Study 1). We suggest that such effects are results from less reliance on negative cultural stereotypes when expatriates have a strong sense of attachment security (Study 2). We further propose that the positive effect of attachment security will be pronounced in task conflicts (vs. relational conflicts) and in conflicts where cognition-based trust (vs. affect-based trust) is broken (Study 3 and 4). These propositions will be tested with different methodologies and samples of expatriates in four studies. Our research framework will provide important practical implications for managing expatriation and intercultural conflict.