Who Am I and Where Do I Belong? The Impact of Heritage Cultural Identity Salience on Immigrant Workers Acculturation Strategies

Abstract

There has been growing interest among organizational researchers in the relationship between acculturation strategies and organizational outcomes of immigrant employees. However, what is noticeably missing from the literature on acculturation strategies is how cultural values such as heritage cultural identity salience affect an immigrant employee’s acculturation strategy and subsequent work attitude and behaviors. Drawing on Berry’s (1997) acculturation strategy and framework, we examined heritage cultural identity salience, harmony enhancement, integration and marginalization acculturation strategy, turnover intention, and affective commitment among immigrant employees in the USA. In this time-lagged study, we found that heritage cultural identity salience was negatively related to marginalization and positively related to integration. Harmony enhancement significantly buffered the relationship between heritage cultural identity salience and marginalization and integration, respectively. Heritage cultural identity salience had significant indirect effects on affective commitment via marginalization and both affective commitment and turnover intention via integration. Lastly, results from the moderated mediated analysis showed that the indirect effect of heritage identity salience on affective commitment and turnover intention via integration was significantly different at varying levels of harmony enhancement. Our study affirms existing research on acculturation strategy and extends the literature by introducing harmony enhancement as a moderator. The use of Berry’s (1997) framework and the results of this study provide useful insights into the inclusion and retention of immigrant employees in the US workforce. Practical implications, as well as theoretical contributions, are discussed.