Predicting expatriate effectiveness: The role of personality, cross-cultural adjustment, and organizational support

Differences in military personnel's hardiness depending on their leadership levels and combat experience: An exploratory pilot study

Constant challenges and permanently stressful conditions at military workplaces demand high levels of hardiness for military personnel. We aimed to determine possible differences in Ukrainian military personnel's hardiness depending on their leadership levels and existing combat experience. The study involved 543 Ukrainian service members (85.8% male and 14.2% female, aged 18 to 61 years). We used the Professional Hardiness Questionnaire and the Brief Resilience Scale. The obtained data showed that the higher leadership levels the military personnel had, the higher their hardiness was (up to the company commander level in our study). We revealed a significant predominance of professional challenge acceptance in the structure of military personnel's hardiness, followed by professional control and professional commitment. This proportion of professional hardiness components did not differ depending on service members' leadership levels. Additionally, we showed significantly higher hardiness stability after participating in combat operations in military leaders compared to service members without subordinates. Our findings necessitate hardiness examination during military personnel selection and its development during military training, in particular for deployment.

Expatriate effectiveness: from conceptualization to operationalization

Expatriate effectiveness has been studied extensively in the expatriate literature. Despite its popularity, the construct has not been well-defined or properly operationalized. Adopting a performance perspective, we conceptualize expatriate effectiveness in terms of task, contextual, and adaptive performance. The relative importance of each type of performance may vary across expatriate jobs and over the course of the expatriate’s tenure. We propose six operational and implementation guidelines for expatriate effectiveness measurement in the contexts of the nature of the expatriate job, the prioritized performance at each stage of adjustment, rater sources and capabilities, rater culture, frequency of evaluation, and the fit between measurement methods and criteria. We contribute to cross-cultural management research by providing a thorough description of the criterion issues in this literature, offering a conceptual framework to differentiate and integrate a variety of constructs that reflect different aspects of cross-cultural effectiveness, and calling attention to the influential role of measurement operations and implementation for the validity of research studies.

Analysis of a brief biodata scale as a predictor of job performance and its incremental validity over the Big Five and Dark Tetrad personality traits

The collection of biographical information (biodata) through CVs and application forms has many advantages, namely easiness of collection, acceptable validity, less prone to faking, and the fulfilment of legal requirements. However, its systematic use among practitioners is scarce. Two of the mains reasons is the overlap with other constructs like personality and the lack of validated biodata scales in articles and public repositories. Aimed to fill this gap, García-Izquierdo and colleagues developed an 8-item scale able to generate positive applicant reactions, but they did not provide empirical evidence that their scale is able to predict job performance. The present paper was developed for this purpose, investigating the scale’s relationship with four different dimensions of job performance (i.e., task performance, contextual performance, counterproductive behaviors, and adaptive performance) and its incremental validity with respect to Big Five and Dark Tetrad personality traits. The study comprises 528 employees from different organizations (M_age = 39.51, SD = 14.25; 52.8% women, M_experience = 17.06, SD = 13.27) which voluntarily agreed to participate filling a questionnaire with the variables of interest. Results provide evidence of the predictive validity of the biodata scale in a multi-occupational sample; identify that these biodata contribute to predicting two specific types of job performance: contextual performance and adaptive performance; shows that a brief job-related biodata scale achieves results comparable to those of most personality traits in predictive models of job performance dimensions; and provide evidence of the incremental predictive validity of biodata over the Big Five and the Dark Tetrad. As a whole, these results provide support for the use of the scale in researcher and applied settings, and contributes to the advance the knowledge of biodata for personnel selection.

An outline for an integrated language-sensitive approach to global work and mobility: cross-fertilising expatriate and international business and management research

Purpose

The purpose of this conceptual literature review is to investigate how language factors have been studied in the expatriate literature, and how cross-fertilisation with the broader language-sensitive international business and management field may facilitate integrated research of language in global work.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on a thematic review of expatriate research and international business and management literature. The findings are structured through Reiche et al.'s (2019) three-dimensional conceptualisation of global work, after which two frameworks are developed to conceptualise how language connects the three dimensions – actors, structures and processes.

Findings

The literature review demonstrates that language-related topics are yet to gain status in the expatriate tradition, and the majority of studies, which do consider linguistic factors appear largely dissociated from the growing community of language research in the broader international management and international business fields. However, once consolidated, the literature reveals that language is present in all dimensions of global work. A processual view of corporate language management highlights the central role of human resource management (HRM), while a dynamic multi-level perspective indicates that language may form bidirectional relationships between the three dimensions of global work.

Originality/value

Due to the segmentation between language-sensitive research in the expatriate and international business/management traditions, few studies have considered the HRM implications of global mobility and the multifaceted nature of language at work. This conceptual literature review brings both perspectives together for a more contextualised and holistic view of language in international workforces.