Perceived Organizational Support for Communication and Expatriate Adjustments: A Case of a China-Based Multinational Corporation

Past research suggests that little scholarly research has addressed the impact of perceived organizational support (POS) on expatriate overseas adjustment (Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer & Luk, 2005; Kawai & Strange, 2014), let alone studies examining POS from the perspective of Asian multinational corporations. Studies of examining expatriate adjustment have paid considerable attention to Western expatriates (Du-Babcock, 2000; Herleman et al., 2008; Takeuchi et al., 2007). The shift of economic growth to Asia has redirected the research focus to examine how expatriates from Mainland China (Cao, 2008; Xu & Du-Babcock, 2012), Taiwan (Chi & Yeh, 2006) and Japan (Peltokorpi, 2007, 2010) adjust to their overseas assignments. In view that an increasingly large number of Asian multinational corporations have expanded their global market operations on a large scale, the present study analyzed a series of in-depth interviews on how organizational communication support affects China-based MNC’s expatriates when adapting to their overseas assignments.