When Does Cross-Cultural Motivation Enhance Expatriate Effectiveness? A Multilevel Investigation of the Moderating Roles of Subsidiary Support and Cultural Distance

Abstract

Departing from the emphasis on individual-level stress processes in prior expatriate research, we develop a multilevel model of expatriate “cross-cultural motivation and effectiveness” (motivation and effectiveness pertaining to cross-cultural contexts) that incorporates the influences of foreign subsidiary–level attributes. Analyses of multisource and multilevel data collected from 556 expatriates in 31 foreign subsidiaries indicated that expatriate cross-cultural motivation was more positively related to work adjustment—and that work adjustment was more likely to mediate the positive relationship between cross-cultural motivation and job performance—when expatriates were assigned to foreign subsidiaries characterized by lower levels of subsidiary support and cultural distance.