Research On The Influence Of Intercultural Communication Competence On Expatriate Adjustment

With rapid development of transitional economies and their increasing global integration,expatriation has become a common phenomenon in these economies.China is a typical example as its foreign investment and international cooperation are unprecedented along with the central government's strategy of "The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road"(one road and one belt).However,due to different cultural backgrounds,especially different values,norms,languages,habits among others,expatriates often find it difficult to adapt to life abroad.The issue of expatriate adjustment and success rate has thus become important and needs to be addressed.Based on the theories of cultural fit theory,anxiety/uncertainty theory and social support theory,this paper reviewed some related literatures about variables and established a model to study the influence of intercultural communication competence on expatriate adjustment,and the correlation suppositions were proposed.Then,based on the survey of 420 expatriates of Chinese multinational corporations(MNCs),this study examined help-seeking behavior as a mediating mechanism to explain the influence of intercultural communication competence on expatriate adjustment,and social network characteristics as a moderating mechanism to show the linkage between social initiative behaviour and expatriate adjustment.The results indicate that intercultural communication competence(cognitive and skill dimensions)and help-seeking behavior can positively and respectively affect expatriate adjustment.Further,the study found that help-seeking behaviour(face-to-face help-seeking)plays a mediation role on the relationship between intercultural communication competence and expatriate adjustment.Additionally,the research found that the social network closeness and frequency positively moderate the relationship between face-to-face help-seeking and expatriate adjustment respectively.The diversity of the social network positively moderate the relationship between online help-seeking and expatriate adjustment.This study has expanded the current study on the problem of expatriate adjustment by adding new mediating and moderating factors and offered management advices to Chinese MNCs to help improve expatriate adjustment.