Improving Expatriation Success: The Roles of Regulatory Focus and Burnout
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12187 |
| Date | 01 April 2017 |
| Published date | 01 April 2017 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 231–247 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12187
Improving Expatriation Success: The Roles
of Regulatory Focus and Burnout
Avi Silbiger, Ron Berger,1,2 Bradley R. Barnes2and Douglas W.S. Renwick2
Lev Academic Centre, Department of Electronics, PO Box 16031, Jerusalem,Israel, 1College of Law and
Business, 26 Ben Gurion Street, Ramat Gan, PO Box 852, Bnei Brak51108, Israel, and 2Sheeld Business
School, Sheeld Hallam University, Howard Street,
Sheeld S1 1WB, UK
Corresponding author email: ronb@clb.ac.il
The study empirically and theoretically contributes to the human resource management
discipline by developing and testing a cohesive model drawing on the pertinent literature
from expatriatemanagement, bur nout and regulatoryfocus theory. Drawing on data from
233 expatriate managers, the study aims to examinethe relationships between expatriate
adjustment and the outcomes of job satisfaction and withdrawal cognitions via expatri-
ate burnout. Specifically, the findings reveal that (a) higher levels of both work adjust-
ment and interaction adjustment lead to reduced expatriate burnout, with the former
having a greater eect on burnout than the latter; (b) burnout serves as a full medi-
ator between work adjustment and withdrawal cognitions, and a partial mediator be-
tween work adjustment and job satisfaction; and (c) regulatory focus serves to moder-
ate expatriate adjustment–outcome consequences, i.e. promotion-focused (as opposed to
prevention-focused)expatriates demonstrate a stronger burnout–job satisfaction relation-
ship. Severalimplications are extracted from the study for regulatorytheory, burnout and
expatriation management practices as well as suggested avenuesfor future research.
Introduction
In striving towards global competence, multina-
tional firms have long since recognized the ad-
vantages of posting their employees on over-
seas assignments (Brookfield, 2010, 2014). Some
scholars suggest that although many such ex-
patriates tend not to return home prematurely,
around a third of them fail to perform suc-
cessfully when overseas (Stroh et al., 2005). As
the impact of psychological withdrawal among
expatriates can be detrimental to organizations,
assignees and their families, the importance of
understanding factors that influence expatria-
tion success has been widely recognized (Bartlett,
1950).
Ever since the seminal work of Black (1988),
Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991) and
Mendenhall and Oddou (1985), a number of
studies have investigated expatriate adjustment
and its antecedents (see summaries in Bhaskar-
Shrinivas et al., 2005; Harrison, Shaer and
Bhaskar-Shrinivas, 2004; Hechanova, Beehr and
Christiansen, 2003). Adjustment represents the
degree of comfort (or absence of pressure) associ-
ated with being an expatriate (Bhaskar-Shrinivas
et al., 2005). The most commonly researched
adjustment outcomes that are also considered as
expatriation success measures are job satisfaction,
thoughts about quitting and performance (Ones
and Viswesvaran, 1997).
Historically,early research on burnout tended to
be anecdotal and descriptive in nature. Much of
this work often lacked precise theoretical contri-
butions or any empirical evidence to support the
advancement of the subject. More recently, how-
ever, we have experienced a significant movement
aimed at both conceptualizing and testing burnout
frameworksin a range of dierent contexts. Specif-
ically, the pertinent literature suggests that there
are several potential antecedents of burnout in-
cluding role ambiguity and role conflict (Chong
© 2016 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
232 A. Silbiger et al.
and Monroe, 2015; Low et al., 2001), job-related
tension (Chong and Monroe, 2015), social sup-
port and coping (Greenglass, Burkeand Konarski,
1998), intrinsic motivation (Low et al., 2001) and
work exhaustion (Shih et al., 2013).
Similarly, several outcomes have been derived
resulting from burnout, including job satisfaction
(Chong and Monroe, 2015; Low et al., 2001;
Ybema, Smulders and Bongers, 2010), orga-
nizational commitment (Chong and Monroe,
2015), emotional exhaustion (Greenglass, Burke
and Konarksi, 1998), salesperson performance
(Low et al., 2001), depersonalization and lessened
feelings of personal accomplishment (Shih et al.,
2013) and time lost at work (Ybema, Smulders
and Bongers, 2010). Overall, a number of in-
struments have been successfully developed to
measure burnout, including Maslach’s Burnout
Inventory, the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory
and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory(Demerouti
et al., 2002; Kristensen et al., 2005; Maslach and
Jackson, 1981).
Whilst the above research and several mod-
els have helped to explain relationships involv-
ing burnout (Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005), our
study is particularly novel as it is amongst the first
to examine burnout as a potential mediating at-
tribute in connecting adjustment with pertinent
outcomes, i.e.job satisfaction and withdrawal cog-
nitions in the context of expatriate management.
This study therefore seeks to answer the question
of whether or not burnout has the potential to par-
tially or fully mediate such adjustment–outcome
relationships. In addition, drawing on regulatory
focus (RF) theory, the study also seeks to answer
whether expatriate managers with higher degrees
of promotion-focus tendencies (than prevention-
focused attributes) moderate the burnout–job sat-
isfaction relationship. The study therefore aims to
make a conceptual and empirical contribution in
terms of advancing our knowledge surrounding
burnout and incrementally adding to RF theory in
the context of expatriation management.
Research in the area of burnout has attracted
global attention and although much of the workin
this domain stemmed from western economies, in-
cluding North America and Europe, there is some
evidence to suggest that it is not unique to these
territories. In recent times a growing number of
studies have been undertaken in emerging
economies such as China, Africa and India. It is
interesting to discover that studies have emerged
in line with the economic development of nations
(Schaufeli et al., 2009).
Drawingon the international dimension further,
this investigation focuses on the relationships be-
tween expatriate adjustment and its consequences.
The study’s context is novel, as burnout has not
tended to be examined in an expatriate context.
The work is also unique in the fact that it exam-
ines the potential mediating role of burnout and
overall the investigation makes a useful contribu-
tion to theory in several ways. Although burnout
has been somewhat neglected and not included in
prior expatriate research,this study extends the lit-
erature by strengthening our understanding of the
processes taking place for maladjusted expatriates.
We conceptualize burnout as a central and crit-
ical variable in the expatriation experience and
our proposed model provides two main dier-
ences from what has been tested so far (Bhaskar-
Shrinivas et al., 2005). First, we introduce burnout
as a potential mediating variable, and second
we posit further relationships between adjustment
and work-related outcomes to examine work ad-
justment as a potential mediating variable. We be-
lieve that such tests of mediation can conceptually
and empirically advance our knowledge and un-
derstanding of the subject, due to the evident di-
rect linkage between such work-related variables.
Finally, our study also contributes to research sur-
rounding burnout, by illustrating its relevance to
non-service workers, specifically in the context of
expatriate management.
Within the stressor−stress−strain perspective,
only a few stable personal traits have been pro-
posed as predictors of adjustment and individual
dierences. The Big Five (e.g. Caligiuri, 2000) for
example has typically been considered as a frame-
work to illustrate the antecedents of adjustment.
Similarly to the way in which the Big Five has re-
ceived growing attention among scholars, RF the-
ory (Higgins, 1997), concerning the way that in-
dividuals set and attain personal goals, is also of
pertinent value within this context. From a theo-
retical stance, RF theory highlights several basic
individual dierences that are highly relevant to
overseas-based assignees.Promotion-focused indi-
viduals appear to pursue goals for achieving posi-
tive results and feel somewhat dejected when these
goals are not met (Higgins, 1997).
Prevention-focused individuals, however, seem
to pursue goals for avoiding negative results. Us-
ing vigilant strategies they feel agitated when such
© 2016 British Academy of Management.
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