Acculturation strategies and integrative complexity as predictors of overseas success

Abstract

With more companies operating globally and more and more employees at all levels working abroad, the study of the factors associated with expatriates' successful job performance is becoming increasingly important. However, the expatriate literature has often emphasized the importance of adjustment to the host culture as key to intercultural effectiveness and overlooked the importance of other possible mediators of successful performance, such as the cognitive skills that develop during second-culture exposure as a result of the tensions created by trying to internalize a new culture while also maintaining the old. In this paper I attempt to address these knowledge gaps by focusing on the effects of acculturation strategy and the mediating role of integrative complexity on performance. Based on the predictions of the Acculturation Complexity Model (ACM), I suggest that biculturals will reach higher levels of integrative complexity than will assimilated and separated individuals, and that consequently they will perform better in managerial tasks, irrespective of their levels of adjustment. The advantages of complexity, however, will not generalize to technical performance. Results from a study of 100 Israelis working in the U.S. confirm these hypotheses. Implications for international management theory and practice are discussed.