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Multiculturalism as a factor for expatriate success through cultural adjustment

Multicultural employees are being recognized as a great asset in both large multinational corporations as well as smaller organizations when it comes to operating in different countries and, subsequently, different cultural contexts. Understanding how cross-cultural adjustment is affected by multiculturalism is becoming more important as more and more firms internationalize their operations. This article tries to add to the growing and diversified literature dealing with expatriate adjustment by studying the specific aspects of cultural adjustment in the Portuguese expatriate community. We conducted a survey focused on the adjustment of monocultural and multicultural Portuguese expatriates in cultural contexts both similar and distinct to their original culture, across several levels of professional experience, and including expatriates who had received cross-cultural training beforehand as well as those who received no such training. Based on our results, we can conclude that previous experience abroad seems to be more conducive to a successful adjustment than being a multicultural individual, and that receiving cross-cultural training in moderate amounts can substantially improve expatriate feelings of well-being by making them feel more prepared for the challenges than culturally distant contexts inevitably bring. A certain lack of awareness by human resource operatives of these benefits appears to be present at most of the companies that participated. These results come with the caveat that the study has a rather small sample size, but it can hopefully spur further research into the importance of employing individuals who identify with multiple cultural identities.

Mikaël Tavares Martins
MGT590: Action Research Paper
Human Resource Management MBA EIU-PARIS