EL MUNDO hOy. GESTIÓN DE LA DIVERSIDAD. UN IMPERATIVO ...

The Successful Adaptation of Expatriates and the Intercultural...
concluded that all the persons sent to a foreign country to work have to
adapt to the job, to the interaction with local people and to the general
environment (Black and Stephens, 1989).
Since there has so far been no information about research carried
out with Latin American expatriates and specifically in Mexico to confirm
if the three dimensions of the adaptation of the expatriates are
valid for the sample of expatriates Ex-A-Tec in this research we put
forward the following hypothesis.
Figure 1 Expatriate’s Adaptation Model
Figure 1.
Expatriate’s Expatriate’s Adaptation Adaptation Model Model
Adaptation Factors DURING the Assignment
Personal Factors
Expatriate’s adaptation
General
Characteristics
Language
Fluency
General Adaptation
Intercultural
Communicative
Competence
Cultural
Distance
Social Adaptation
Job Adaptation
Parental
Demand
Family Factors
Family
Cohesion
Organisatonal FActors
Salary
Package
Company
Support
Assignment’s
Vector
Cultural
Training
Job Factor
Work
Inducement
Rol e
Clarity
Source: Own Sources (adapted from Black et al, 1991)
H1: The adaptation Source: Own Sources of the (adapted expatriate from Black to et the al, 1991) international assignment
is a construct which includes three different sides: general, social and job
adaptation.
From the initial adaptation model (Black et al., 1991), different authors have been adding
to the list of factors that are involved in the expatriate’s cultural adaptation (Arthur and
Bennet, 1995; Cerdin, 1999; Shaffer et al., 1999; Parker and McEvoy, 1993; Selmer,
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1998) during the international assignment. Nevertheless, researchers keep confirming the
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