Predicted adjustment and its relationship to 360-degree behavioral ratings and personality measures in leaders considered for expatriate assignments

Successful overseas assignments are critical to the success of global companies and have been linked to robustness of expatriate selection approaches. Expatriate failures cause corporations great financial losses and result in negative psychosocial impact on the leaders selected and their families. Therefore, it is important to enhance current approaches to expatriate selection to enable prediction of markers of expatriate success, such as expatriate adjustment, prior to the overseas assignments. Prior research has linked ratings of leaders' effectiveness and personality to expatriate adjustment; however, a key research question remains: do the socially adaptive aspects of personality and effectiveness contribute to the prediction of successful overseas assignments? A group of 125 managers, recruited as part of high potential selection process in a global company, completed the Overseas Assignment Inventory, the Hogan Personality Inventory and the Survey of Executive Leadership. Based on these ex post facto assessment data a hierarchical multiple regression approach was used to predict social adaptability. Findings demonstrate that both personality and 360-degree ratings of leadership effectiveness are significant predictors, together explaining 24% of the variability in social adaptability. These results suggest that assessing adjustment prior to the overseas assignment may help prevent expatriate failures. The findings can be used by international corporations to optimize expatriate selection approaches to ensure higher social adaptability in leaders sent to work abroad. It is recommended that corporations provide targeted training prior to and during overseas assignments to enable expatriate success and well-adjusted expatriate families, thus contributing to positive social change.