Organizational support and expatriate work adjustment: The moderating role of organizational identification
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Strategy
Language
en
Pages
59
Series
Abstract
Expatriate work adjustment is one of the key factors contributing to a successful expatriate experience. For this reason, extensive research has been conducted to understand its antecedents and outcomes. Perceived organizational support and organizational identification are two constructs that have been found to be positively related to work adjustment. However, both come from distinct theoretical backgrounds: perceived organizational support is a child of social exchange theory (SET), which relies on norms such as reciprocation to produce favourable behaviours or states of mind, whereas organizational identification can be traced back to social identity theory (SIT), which holds that when individuals identify themselves with an organization’s identity, its goals and interests become intertwined with theirs, and they act in the organization’s best interests. However, despite both SET and SIT theories producing a similar outcome, seldom have they been studied together in this context. In addition, while promising, research on how organizational identification relates to work adjustment is still limited, and significantly so in the context of expatriation. Finally, literature around these relationships has tended to focus on expatriates out of US-based companies assigned to different areas of the globe. To address these gaps, this thesis proposed that perceived organizational support is positively related to expatriate work adjustment, testing this relationship on people from multiple backgrounds on assignment in Russia. Secondly, it proposed that organizational identification positively moderates the relationship between perceived organizational support and work adjustment. Finally, it also explored these relationships under different individual contexts, using educational levels, job position, and the existence of previous expatriation experience as control variables. The results confirmed the hypotheses and showed that perceived organizational support is positively related with expatriate work adjustment ( = 0.5; p < 0.001), and that organizational identification positively moderated this relationship ( = 0.15; p < 0.014). Furthermore, testing with the control variables showed that this relationship is subject to individual backgrounds. This paper contributes to the current body of research in a few ways. First, it expanded on the thus-far limited research examining the relationships between constructs from SET and SIT backgrounds in relation to work adjustment. Secondly, it examined the relationship between organizational identification and expatriate work adjustment, something that has received little attention in expatriate literature. Finally, it explored these relationships under different individual backgrounds, such as job position and educational level. This thesis’ findings have both theoretical and managerial implications, showing that when accounting for the psychological relationship between individual and organization, both social exchange and social identity theories should be considered.Description
Thesis advisor
Koveshnikov, AlexeiKeywords
perceived organizational support, work-role adjustment, expatriate adjustment, organizational identification, social identity theory, social exchange theory