The Factors Influencing Expatriates’ Work-Family Conflicts And Job Performance In A Chinese And Thai Joint-Venture Firm

Work-family conflict (WFC) is the role pressures from the incompatible work and family roles in some respect. For expatriates, work in a unfamiliar climate and far away from their families can induce more work-family conflict. In the more and more global economy environment, it becomes business managers’concerning about how to reduce their expatriates’work-family conflict.Owing to the fast globalization of business and markets, a substantially increased number of foreign business people work in China and Thailand. Numerous expatriates and family members are facing the difficulty of adjustment to another culture and new atmosphere which will have an influence on their long term work performance and career success in any way. This paper seeks to examine the work-family conflict of expatriates within a joint venture firm in China and Thailand. The main study progress includes an in-depth interview with the expatriates who work in China and Thailand to explore new perspectives, by adopt the questionnaires to affirm the received scale and investigation on333samples based on the revised questionnaire. This study reveals several new conclusions as follows:(1) the concept of Work-Family Conflict is different between Chinese and Thai expatriates in several dimensions, such as the value of family members for Thai expratiates are higher than Chinese expatriates.(2) Expatriates from both countries are facing the time, strain and behavior conflict on work interfere their family life and remain lack of well-assist from the firm.(3) Adaptation is positive to expatriate’s work-family conflict, while preparation is negative.(4) The expatriate’s work-family conflict partially moderates the relationship between adaptation and work performance.(5) The expatriate’s work-family conflict partially moderates the relationship between training preparation and career success.In this paper, there are two innovations. Firstly, we took a new perspective on work-family conflict between Chinese and Thai expatriates and proposed the new concept of expatriates’work-family conflict. Secondly, we proposed a process model that combines the trend of work-family conflict with its influence on their work performance and career success.