Chinese Expatriates Managerial Coaching Behaviors' Impact On Local Zambian Subordinates Thriving At Work,Learning Effects And Work Performance In Cross-Cultural Organizations

Managerial coaching has been one of the most important attributes in organizational performance and learning to emerge in the last two decades.In majority of the cases,managerial coaching has been linked to expatriation,and in today's globalized world expatriates have accounted for a large number of managers who administer coaching to local employees in multinational corporations(MNC's).It is worth noting that due to globalized operations,the number of expatriates in 2013 stood around 52 million,and by 2017 it was at 66 million,representing a 5.8% growth,Finaccord forecasts indicate that the number might reach 82 million by 2021.The purpose of this study is to investigate and explore how learning effects and work performance of local employee's will be affected by expatriate managerial coaching behaviors,also the influence of local employee's thriving at work on learning effects and work performance depending on levels of cross cultural intelligence and levels of expatriate adjustment of expatriate managers.This study also aims to examine whether expatriate adjustment and cultural intelligence can moderate the relationship between managerial coaching behaviors and employee's thriving at work,as well as managerial coaching behaviors and employee learning effects.Four fundamental theories,managerial coaching behaviours,thriving at work,learning effects and task performance were used to frame the hypothesized conceptual model used in this study,in managerial coaching,path-goal theory was used as the overarching theory.Data was collected from two population sets,local employee's and expatriates.The data was collected in Zambia at two subsidiaries of a company hosting more than 1,000 employee's.Data was also collected from other entities that hosted Zambian local employees.A 60 item questionnaire was administered to the local employee's and an 87 item questionnaire was administered to the expatriates,sometimes referred to as supervisors or expatriate managers in this dissertation.One-on-one interviews were also conducted for a second qualitative study to collect anecdotes that gave an overview to our study.Each Chinese expatriate was tied to three Zambian local employees that were in his/her direct supervision.More than 600 pre-paired questionnaires were sent out to Sinoma Cement Manufacturing Company in Lusaka and Luanshya.Employee's and expatriates in manufacturing,operations,administration and sales departments filled in the questionnaires.A total of 258 employee respondents and 86 expatriate respondents in managing positions filled in and sent back the questionnaires.Zambians who worked with other Chinese firm were interviewed face to face as well for our case study.In order to ensure construct validity and reliability of each measure,the estimate of Cronbach's alpha on each variable including a factor analysis were performed;the KMO Bartlett's test for sphericity was conducted.As well as preliminary analysis tests such as,descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were also conducted.Each variable in this study was correlated with another.Multivariate Correlation Regression Analysis was performed in order to test the initially proposed hypotheses.Hierarchical Regression Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling in SPSS-AMOS were used to test moderating effects.PROCESS by Andrew Hayes was used a second opinion for result verification.The findings of this dissertation in accordance to the structural equation model with standardized regression coefficients supports our initial assumption that managerial coaching behaviors has an impact on employee learning effects,as for employee's thriving at work and work performance there was no statistical significance to support impact.The schematic hypothesized model further presented a statistically significant moderating role by expatriate cultural intelligence to the relationship between managerial coaching behaviors and employee learning effects,however a non-significant moderation role by expatriate adjustment was found in the relationship between managerial coaching behaviors and employees thriving at work.However a direct significant relationship was established between the two independent variables.This study also demonstrates other direct positive relationships and non-significant relationships owing to the structural equation model.This dissertation provides empirical support to the proposed relationships and adds statistical evidence to prove and disprove hypothesized relationships.The case study also provides empirical evidence in our study and its findings shade more light on the expatriate and local employee relationships.The findings of this study can be a blueprint for multinational corporations which rely on expatriation of its staff for managerial coaching and want its local staff,as a result,to improve their learning effects and work performance in the light of the impact of expatriation,on employee's thriving at work.Research limitations,innovation and shortcomings are discussed at the end of this dissertation.