Personality traits and expatriate adjustment in Malaysia

Pages594-612
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-06-2017-0091
Published date10 December 2018
Date10 December 2018
AuthorChristopher Richardson,Guat-Hoon Tan,Shaian Kiumarsi
Subject MatterStrategy,International business
Personality traits and expatriate
adjustment in Malaysia
Christopher Richardson, Guat-Hoon Tan and Shaian Kiumarsi
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to investigateand reflect upon the effects of personality traits on expatriate
adjustmentwithin the context of Malaysia’s multiculturalsociety.
Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the multicultural personality questionnaire (MPQ) and
extrapolating from the literature on expatriate adjustment, theauthors introduce five hypotheses, which
are then testedbased on data derived from 101 expatriates working in Malaysia.
Findings The results indicate a positiverelationship between both open-mindedness and adjustment
as well as between flexibility and adjustment. However, the authors did not observe any significant
positiverelationship between the three remainingMPQ personality traits andexpatriate adjustment.
Originality/value While various studies have investigated the relationship between personality and
expatriate adjustment in an Asian context, the majority have been conducted in largely monocultural
settings, or at least on the implicit assumption of a single societal culture within the host country. This
paper contributesto the literature by exploring the relationshipin the context of a multicultural Asianhost
country.
Keywords Expatriate adjustment, Malaysia, Personality traits, Cultural diversity
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Asia represents a critical context for the expatriation research agenda due to the high, and
growing, number of expatriates in the region(Sorndee et al.,2017). Therefore, it is important
to understand the background factors that contribute either positively or negatively to
the adjustment and ultimately successof Asia-based expatriates. One of the chief factors in
delaying or even obstructing expatriate adjustment more broadly is the difficulties involved
in accommodating oneself to new cultures (Hemmasi and Downes, 2013;Sorndee et al.,
2017). Cross-cultural adjustment (CCA)[1], or “the adjustment of an individual to a new
cultural, social and work environment” (Davies et al., 2015, p. 170), is thus a central concept
in expatriate research (Nolan and Morley,2014).
While a number of factors at both the individual and organisational levels influence CCA
(Aycan, 1997), one of the most important and widely studied has been personality traits,
which refer to the “relatively stable, enduring patterns of how individuals feel, think, and
behave” (Shaffer et al., 2006, p. 111). Previous studies have indicated a particularly strong
association between personality and CCA, both in an Asian (Peltokorpi and Froese, 2012)
and non-Asian (Caligiuri, 2000) context. It has even been suggested that personality is
more important for effective adjustment than professional work skills, which, unlike
personality, can be learned through training (Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1999). In essence,
expatriates who possess certain stable qualities such as extroversion and open-
mindedness are usually better placed to acquire and process information about, for
instance, local thought and behavioural processes and, therefore, how to conduct
themselves in a particular host country (Black,1990;Huang et al., 2005;Wang et al., 2013).
Christopher Richardson is
based at the Graduate
School of Business,
Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia.
Guat-Hoon Tan is based at
Micro Modular System Sdn.
Bhd, Pulau Pinang,
Malaysia. Shaian Kiumarsi
is based at the Graduate
School of Business,
Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia.
Received 17 July 2017
Revised 20 November 2017
14 February 2018
Accepted 18 March 2018
PAGE 594 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jVOL. 12 NO. 4 2018, pp. 594-612, ©EmeraldPublishing Limited, ISSN 1558-7894 DOI 10.1108/JABS-06-2017-0091
However, with few exceptions (Maharjan and Sekiguchi, 2017), the majority of studies
investigating the relationshipbetween personality traits and CCA, including those focussing
on the Asian context, have been conducted in largely monocultural settings, or at least on
the implicit assumption of a single societal culture within the host country. In other words,
there has been what Shenkar (2001) calls an “assumption of homogeneity” within the
literature. While we recognise that such research has undeniably helped in advancing our
understanding of the expatriate experience, it nevertheless restricts our ability to generalise
to more culturally diverse Asian countries.
This study addresses this shortcomingby investigating the extent to which personality traits
affect expatriate adjustment in a multicultural Asian society. With this aim in mind, we adopt
a quantitative, survey-based approach. Our host-country context is Malaysia, which in
addition to being a rapidly growing economy (Ahmad, 2014), hosts a fairly sizeable and
steadily increasing expatriate population (Abdul Malek and Budhwar, 2013) and displays
considerable ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalisation (Muiz, 2015), a factor that has
contributed to the lack of an identifiable Malaysian style of management (Sakikawa et al.,
2017). More precisely, the country comprises three primary and highly distinct ethnic
groups: the Malays, Chinese and Indians each of which “has maintained its cultural
heritage, including language, dress, food, religion, and customs [...] [retaining] its own
cultural identity while livingand working side by side” (Merriam and Mohamad, 2000,p.49).
Our goal here is to examine whetherand to what extent such diversity affects CCA.
The remainder of the article is structuredas follows. The ensuing section reviewsthe related
extant literature from which we develop our hypotheses and conceptual framework. Next,
we explain the methods adopted in the collection and analysis of our data. In the following
sections, we present our results and discuss these in light of existing knowledge on the
subject. Following this, we highlight the managerial implications arising from the research.
The paper ends with an acknowledgementof the study’s limitations.
Literature review
Expatriate adjustment
Expatriates are defined as “legallyworking individuals who reside temporarily in a country of
which they are not a citizen in order to accomplish a career-related goal, being relocated
abroad either by an organisation, by self-initiation, or directly employed within the host
country” (McNulty and Brewster, 2017, p. 30). Living and working abroad typically
demands considerable alterations to one’s private and professional lives and a failure to
adjust well has all sorts of potential repercussions for both the individual concerned as well
as his or her employer. At the individual level risks include reduced self-esteem (Tung,
1987) and even marital breakdowns (McNulty, 2015), while at the organisational level, poor
adjustment can result in negative performance (Kraimer et al., 2001). Therefore, both
individual managers and the firms that employ them have a vested interest in minimising
maladjustment.
A well-adjusted expatriate adapts him/herself to both work and non-work environments
(Black, 1988;Palthe, 2008;Takeuchi et al.,2005;Zhang, 2012). Unfortunately achieving
such all-rounded adjustment is often easier said than done and many expatriates fail to
effectively adapt themselves to their host country (Okpara, 2016;Okpara and Kabongo,
2011). As a result, there is considerable scholarly interest in the factorsthat determine CCA
(Haslberger and Dickmann, 2016). In line with this, studies have found that adjustment is
significantly influenced by a multitude of factors including expatriate language skills (Kim
and Slocum, 2008), spouse/partner adjustment (Davies et al., 2015;Cho et al.,2013;Mohr
and Klein, 2004), and even gender (Haslberger, 2010). One of the most important and
widely studied, however, has been the role of personality traits (Huang et al.,2005;Ward
et al.,2004
), to which we now turn.
VOL. 12 NO. 4 2018 jJOURNALOF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jPAGE 595

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