Does It Really Work? Re-Assessing the Impact of Pre-Departure Cross-Cultural Training on Expatriate Adjustment

Cultural adjustment is considered to be a prerequisite for expatriate success abroad. One way to enhance adjustment is to provide employees with knowledge and awareness of appropriate norms and behaviors of the host country through cross-cultural training (CCT). This article analyzes the impact of pre-departure CCT on expatriate adjustment and focuses on variations in participation, length and the comprehensiveness of training. Unlike previous research, the study focuses on the effectiveness of pre-departure CCT for non-US employees expatriated to a broad range of host country settings. Employing data from 339 expatriates from 20 German Multinational Corporations (MNCs) the study finds CCT has little if any effect on general, interactional or work setting expatriate adjustment. However, a significant impact of foreign language competence was found for all three dimensions of expatriate adjustment. We used interviews with 20 expatriates to supplement our discussion and provide further implications for practice

Cultural antecedents and performance consequences of open communication and knowledge transfer in multicultural process-innovation teams

Processes in multinational corporations (MNCs) have to be configured with regard to the challenges of a permanently evolving environment. Process-innovation teams are considered to be powerful tools inside organizations to cope with this necessity. Their performance is of major importance for most MNCs. As a response to the increasing internationalization and globalization of markets, these teams show a growing culturally diverse composition. This article focuses on two major processes that are discussed to decide about a positive or a negative performance of a team: intra-team communication style and knowledge transfer. Explicitly, this article (1) tests for the influence of cultural diversity on intra-team communication and knowledge transfer, and (2) empirically examines the impact of the openness of intra-team communication and knowledge transfer on the performance of multicultural teams. A quantitative empirical survey among 84 team-members of 20 culturally diverse teams within a German sportswear company is used to test the relationships. Findings reveal that national cultural diversity has no significant impact on intra-team communication and knowledge transfer but both of them have significant influences on different measures of performance