The role of emotional abilities in the development of cross-cultural competence and their impact on cross-cultural adjustment and job satisfaction

The present study examined the role of two specific emotional abilities---understanding emotions and managing emotions---in the development of cross-cultural competence. The impact of cross-cultural competence on cross-cultural adjustment and job satisfaction was also explored. A sample of 425 military personnel was used to test the hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS. Findings herein show that cross-cultural competence was best defined by the subsumption of all three cultural dimensions (i.e., cross-cultural knowledge and cognition, skills and affect and motivation) as opposed to individual cultural dimensions with separate correlates. These cross-cultural dimensions act in an interdependent cumulative manner (Abbe 2008; Shay & Baack, 2006) thereby implying that individuals would require all three competencies to successfully adjust in cross-cultural contexts. Furthermore, results point to a "cascading" effect/causal chain between the emotional abilities such that emotional understanding was found to temporally precede emotion management which in turn led to favorable work outcomes such as cross-cultural competence, cross-cultural adjustment, and job satisfaction. The results further support the idea that emotion management is a proximal antecedent of cross-cultural competence in that individuals who are able to regulate their emotions are also more likely to use that ability to master cross-cultural knowledge, skills, and motivation. It is further affirmed that individuals who possess higher levels of cross-cultural competence will report greater cross-cultural adjustment. This level of cross-cultural adjustment was found to partially mediate the relationship between cross-cultural competence and job satisfaction. This partial mediating effect suggests that, the effect of emotion management on cross-cultural adjustment occurs at least partially through the development of cross-cultural competence. Findings also show that emotion management predicts cross-cultural competence above and beyond the role of Agreeableness, gender and age thereby accounting for their roles as confounding variables. In sum, exploring these relationships serves to provide more information as to the function of emotional abilities in the development of cross-cultural competence and the role of cross-cultural competence in the success of expatriates' overseas assignments. Practical and theoretical implications are further discussed.