The Impact of Positive Psychological Capital and Perceived Support on Work Performance of Korean Expatriates: The Mediating Effects of Cross-Cultural Adjustment and Work Engagement

This study aimed to examine the relationships between job resources at various levels, including (a) an individual level–positive psychological capital (PsyCap); (b) an interpersonal level–perceived supervisor support, perceived subordinate support, and perceived family support; (c) an organizational level–perceived organizational support; and (d) a societal level–perceived community support, and work performance in the context of an expatriate assignment. The mediating effects of cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) and work engagement on the relationships were also examined. Three theories, conservation of resource theory, job demands-resources model, and spillover theory guided this study. The variables and the Korean cultural context are systematically reviewed to develop research hypotheses. An online questionnaire survey was implemented to collect data, including 12 translated instruments into Korean. The sample size was 438 Korean expatriates in 32 countries. Descriptive statistics, reliability, correlation, common method variance, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping were used in this study. The results of the analyses indicated that the hypothesized conceptual model was adequately supported by the results of this study. In the path analysis, PsyCap was associated with all dimensions of CCA. While perceived supervisor support was related to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and general CCA, perceived subordinate support was associated with work performance, work engagement, and interaction CCA. Perceived family support was related to task performance, counterproductive work behavior (CWB), and work engagement. Perceived organizational support was related to OCB and all dimensions of CCA. Perceived community support was associated with interaction and work CCA. General CCA was associated with work engagement, CWB, and withdrawal behavior. Interaction CCA was associated with task performance and OCB. Work CCA was related to work engagement. Work engagement was associated with task performance and OCB. The findings of this study overall supported the selected theories and related research. The significance of this study includes new insights and a deeper understanding of the relationships between multiple job resources and outcomes in the context of an expatriate assignment, which is an under-explored research area in HRD. The findings also provide several significant theoretical contributions to HRD and important practical insights for multiple stakeholders

Deducing an emergent South Korean behavioural taxonomy of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in European Journal of Training and Development, on 28/07/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-04-2020-0069 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Purpose This study aims to identify people’s perceptions of what behaviourally differentiates effective managers from ineffective managers within a South Korean (SK) public sector organization, and the extent to which the findings are similar or different to those of an equivalent previous study in the SK private sector. Design/methodology/approach Adopting the “pragmatic approach” and assuming a post-positivist ontology and constructivist–interpretivist epistemology, examples of “effective” and “ineffective” managerial behaviour were collected from managers and non-managerial employees in an SK central government Ministry using the critical incident technique. The collected critical incidents were coded, classified and reduced to a smaller number of behavioural categories. These were then compared against equivalent findings from a previous SK private sector replication study using open, axial and selective coding to identify generic behavioural criteria (GBCs) Findings High degrees of convergence point towards the emergence of a “two-factor” SK behavioural taxonomy of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness comprised of positive (n = 11) and negative (n = 4) GBCs of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour. Practical implications The GBCs constituting the deduced SK behavioural taxonomy could be used by HRD practitioners to critically evaluate the efficacy of extant management and leadership development (MLD) programmes, or to inform/shape the creation of new MLD programmes. Additionally, they could be used by other HR professionals to critically evaluate the relevance and efficacy of the assessment criteria used for existing management selection, 360-degree feedback and formal performance appraisal systems. Originality/value The emergence of an SK behavioural taxonomy through Type 3 (emic-as-emic) and Type 4 (emic-and-etic) indigenous research is a rare example of Eastern mid-range theory development

Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness in a Korean context: An indigenous qualitative study

Multinational corporations (MNCs) across the world have sent an increasing number of managers abroad to leverage unprecedented opportunities in the era of globalization. However, their failure rate has been above 33% for decades, resulting in substantial costs (Puck, Kittler, & Wright, 2008). One of the primary reasons for this failure is a lack of understanding of the national and organizational cultures within the host countries (Festing & Maletzky, 2011). For example, while a number of MNCs have entered the Korean market, several such as Yahoo, Motorola, and Walmart have failed and withdrawn due to the companies’ lack of adjustment to the Korean cultural context (Choe, 2006; Woo, 2013). In spite of the significance of culturally embedded practices, most researchers who have explored management and leadership in Asian countries, whether they were Western or indigenous researchers, have implemented studies using extant Western management and leadership theories derived within the Western cultural context (Leung, 2007; Tsui, 2006). Numerous scholars have claimed that this could be problematic because the findings of such studies may not be applicable to non-Western countries (Li, 2012; Liden & Antonakis, 2009), and may fail to provide insights and understanding of novel contexts or to reveal indigenous aspects of management and leadership (Tsui, 2007). Consequently, there have been increasing calls for indigenous management and leadership research within Asian countries (see Li et al., 2014; Lyles, 2009; Tsui, 2004; Wolfgramm, Spiller, & Voyageur, 2014). Over the past 30 years, managerial effectiveness and leadership effectiveness have been substantially neglected areas of management research (Noordegraaf & Stewart, 2000; Yukl, Gordon, & Taber, 2002). In addition, there has been little agreement on what specific behaviors distinguish effective managers from ineffective ones. Furthermore, more research is needed to examine the managerial and leadership behaviors that are critical for shaping the performance of individuals, groups and organizations (see Borman & Brush, 1993; Cammock, Nilakant & Dakin, 1995; Mumford, 2011; Noordegraaf & Stewart, 2000; Yukl et al., 2002). While most of the research related to managerial and leadership effectiveness has been conducted in the U.S., the few notable non-U.S. studies include that of Cammock et al. (1995) in New Zealand who developed a behavioral lay model of managerial effectiveness using the repertory grid technique. Another notable exception is the cumulative series of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness studies conducted by Hamlin with various indigenous co-researchers in Western and non-Western countries (see Hamlin & Patel, 2012; Ruiz, Wang, & Hamlin, 2013) using Flanagan’s (1954) critical incident technique (CIT)

International Students’ Psychological Capital in Japan: Moderated Mediation of Adjustment and Engagement

This study examined how positive psychological capital (PsyCap) of international students is linked to their engagement and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in the Japanese higher education context. We also explored the mediation effect of engagement between PsyCap and OCBs, and the moderating effect of cultural adjustment on the mediation relationship. The results show that PsyCap is significantly related to OCBs, which is mediated by engagement. The moderation effect of cultural adjustment is also significant

Job Performance in the Learning Organization: The Mediating Impacts of Self‐Efficacy and Work Engagement

This study examines the structural relationships among learning‐organization culture, self‐efficacy, work engagement, and job performance in Korean workforce institutions. The authors also investigated the mediating roles of teachers’ self‐efficacy and work engagement on the relationship between the learning‐organization culture and teachers’ job performance. Working with a total of 481 valid surveys from workforce‐education teachers at 21 Korean workforce‐education schools, structural equation modeling (SEM) and the Sobel test were primarily implemented to examine the hypothesized model and research hypotheses. The results showed the positive impacts of learning‐organization culture in Korean workforce institutions on teachers’ self‐efficacy and work engagement. Teachers’ self‐efficacy positively affected their work engagement and job performance, and the relationship between work engagement and job performance was statistically significant. Also identified were the mediating roles of self‐efficacy and work engagement on the relationships between the learning‐organization culture of workforce‐education schools and the teachers’ job performance