Job characteristics and perceived cultural novelty: exploring the consequences for expatriate academics’ job satisfaction

Expatriate partners’ personality and its influence on acculturation into a new cultural context: Examining the role of dispositional affectivity

Despite the vital role that trailing partners play for successful expatriation, we still know very little about what actually causes partners to thrive and integrate effectively into the new cultural context. However, as indications have emerged that the personality of partners could be key to a favorable acculturation trajectory, we set out to explore this further. More specifically, we assess the role of expatriate partners’ dispositional affectivity, that is, positive and negative affectivity. We examine this in relation to internal acculturation (in the form of interaction and general adjustment) and external acculturation (in the form of local community embeddedness and intentions to stay or to return home). Drawing on the data of 123 trailing partners, full support was found for three out of four hypotheses regarding the effects of positive affectivity. Further, a marginally significant negative association was identified for the relationship between positive affectivity and repatriation intentions. For negative affectivity, two hypotheses were met. Interestingly, no significant influence of negative affectivity on community embeddedness was found. The association between negative affectivity and interaction adjustment was marginally significant indicating some tentative support. In sum, this study corroborates that dispositional affectivity is an overall important concept to explain trailing partners’ acculturation. However, the role of positive and negative affectivity seems to vary along the different proxies of internal and external acculturation.

Sailing through the COVID-19 pandemic: managing expatriates' psychological well-being and performance during natural crises

Purpose

The unprecedented challenges brought about by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic affected people's lives worldwide. The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual model to explain how natural crisis events, such as COVID-19, cause stress and influence the psychological well-being (PWB) and performance of expatriates.

Design/methodology/approach

The model presented in this conceptual paper is based on Bader and Berg's (2014) two-stage stress emergence and outcome model developed to study expatriates' performance in terrorism-endangered countries. The authors apply their model to natural crisis events and provide propositions to explain the postulated relationships.

Findings

The proposed model delineates the stressors that emerge from psychological and situational factors, and how they impact the PWB and performance of expatriates. The article emphasizes how resilience, social network, and support from the organization, supervisor, and family can help mitigate the adverse effects of stress on the PWB of expatriates. Furthermore, keeping in mind the prevailing situations due to COVID-19, the authors shed light on the indispensability of virtual collaboration in ameliorating expatriates' performance in challenging times.

Practical implications

Implications are discussed for organizations in devising plans and strategies to deal with unforeseen crisis events.

Originality/value

This study extends the expatriation literature to the events of natural crisis by incorporating the stress emergence-outcome model. In doing so, the authors identify the factors relevant to natural crises and apply them to understand how they could impact expatriates in such times.

The Impact of Internet Addiction and Job Satisfaction on Mental Health Symptoms among a Sample of Portuguese Workers

Not many studies assessing the impact of internet addiction (IA) and job satisfaction (JS) on mental health symptoms (MHS) among active workers exist. Therefore, the purpose of this study was as follows: (a) to assess the presence of criteria for IA among a sample of active workers; (b) to analyze differences in IA, JS and MHS, by gender; (c) to analyze association levels among IA, JS, and MHS; and (d) to determine the predictive effect of IA and JS on MHS. In total, 1064 participants (M_age = 40.66; SD = 12.02) completed a survey containing four categories of measures: demographic information, internet addiction, job satisfaction, and mental health symptoms (anxiety and depression). Results showed a presence of 13.3% for IA among the sample. Male participants showed higher scores of IA and JS but lower scores of overall MSH than female participants did. Significant positive correlations were found between overall IA and MHS, and significant negative correlations were found between IA and JS, and MHS and JS. Hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that strong predictors of MHS were age (being older), gender (being female), not having enough economic funds, being unsatisfied with the leadership in the job, being unsatisfied with the nature of the job, and having higher scores in salience and excessive use regarding IA. In conclusion, addiction to internet technology is a risk factor with implications for occupational satisfaction and mental health.