In this chapter, the background, problem statement, study purpose, research questions, significance, and research limitations of this study were introduced.
Background of the Study
The rapid advancement of technology and transportation creates a flat world and allow workforces to move beyond nation boundary. In a global workplace, people have more opportunities to collaborate and compete with others from different corners of the planet than ever (Friedman, 2005). It is important for both individuals and organizations to well-prepared competition in a wide range of cultural context.
Budworth and DeGama (2012) asserted that individuals’ abilities to lead, manage, negotiate, and resolve conflict with clients, colleagues, and business partners all over the world, which are critical fundamentals that the organizations contest with other competitors in the global market.
Due to the internationalization in the world, the cross-cultural interactions are significantly increased between people. The use of diverse workforce in the global village has led to large number of labors living and working overseas, and having to adjust to new work environment as well as new living style (Black, Mendenhall, &
Oddou, 1991). Black and Stephens (1989) found out that the longer the employees adjust to the new environment, the much more cost the organization spend. That is to say, the employees’ level of adaptation is one critical factor that determines organization’s success or failure in a global market. It is important to address the problem of how to facilitate individual’s adjustment as conducting overseas assignment in order to minimize the cost of failure adaptation and increase the organization global competition advantages (Harrison, Chadwick, & Scale, 1996).
The resource-based view of the organization suggested that human capital can
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be a key source of competitive advantage because it is difficult to copy individuals’
education, knowledge, experiences, skills, and intelligence to increase the organization’s competitiveness (Luthans, Luthans, & Luthans, 2004). For instance, cultural intelligence (CQ) is the vital capability for people to function effectively in intercultural settings and many researchers have been draw attention to this issue for many years due to its high relevance to globalization, international management, and workforce diversification (Van Dyne, Ang, Ng, Rockstuhl, Tan, & Koh, 2012). Aside from the intelligence, individuals’ mental resources such as confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience have been viewed as important factors to determine the competitive advantage in the workplace (Luthans, Avey, Clapp-Smith, & Li, 2008 a).
Luthans et al. (2008) constructed the concept of psychological capital (PsyCap) with features of confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience and proposed that employees with higher PsyCap have great impact on the organization’s success. According to Luthans, Avolio, Avey, and Norman (2007), the increasing 10% of PsyCap leads organization to have 50% incensement of performance. PsyCap can be viewed as a factor that translates benefit of positive psychology movement into organizations and labors (Luthans, Norman, Avolio, & Avey, 2008). They believed that when organizations seek ways to help employees to overcome challenging work environment, it is more important to help them recognize the advantages and develop their strength rather than just fix the weakness (Avey, Luthans, Jensen, & Susan, 2009).
In the organization, the supervisors play important roles to give formal feedback about the job performance and to determine employees’ amount of payment.
Supervisors’ support are more influential than other social supports to employees because supervisors act as agents in the organization to closely work together with employees every day, to help employees deal with problems, and also evaluate their
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performance directly (Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006). Yoon and Thye (2000) suggested that perceived supervisor support (PSS) is an important determinant of organizational effectiveness and personal well-being. Above all, environmental characteristics, such as supervisor support, do play a critical role that affects individuals’ degree of adaptation as well as psychological status when employees encounter challenging situations.
Acknowledging the economic crisis and dynamic industry movement, not only expatriates are sent to overseas assignments but also many other labors move beyond their countries to seek more job opportunities. Take Taiwan as an example, owing to the economic development and the increasing amount of high educated citizens, the problem of labor shortage becomes seriously in recent years. Many foreign labors immigrate into Taiwan from the near countries to work for the dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs. In May 2013, the total number of foreign labors in Taiwan was 454,171.
Foreign laborers in Taiwan suffer many job-related problems, such as missing work time with no excuses, performing job in low quality and low pace, violating rules, and inhabiting low morality, which decreased the productivity and created conflicts within the organization (Chen, Lin, & Sawangpattanakul, 2011). In order to overcome these problems, more alternative ways should be found to enhance individual’s degree of adaptation.
Problem Statement
Cross-cultural adjustment is the degree of psychological comfort individuals feel during the adaptation process when living and working in a foreign culture (Black &
Stephens, 1989). Prior researches have been identified factors that influence on individual’s cross-cultural adjustment. For example, language fluency (Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005; Kim & Slocum, 2008), social support (Adelman, 1988; Bhaskar et al., 2005; Caligiuri & Lazarova, 2002; Caligiuri,
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Joshi, & Lazarova, 1999; Kraimer, Wayne, & Jaworski, 2001), previous international experiences (Bhaskar et al., 2005; Black, Morrison, & Gregersen, 1999; Kim &
Slocum, 2008), pre-departure training (Black & Grefersen, 1991; Black, Mendenhall,
& Oddou, 1991), and individual differences. The individual differences included personality (e.g., open-mindedness, emotional stability, extraversion), self-monitoring, self-efficacy (Harrison et al., 1996; Plathe, 2004; Parker & McEvoy, 1993; Peltokorpi
& Froese, 2012; Shaffer, Harrison, Gregersen, Black, & Ferzandi, 2006), and cultural intelligence (CQ) (Ang, Van Dyne, Koh, & Ng, 2004; Ang, Van Dyne, Koh, Ng, Templer, Tay, & Chandrasekar, 2007; Lin, Chen, & Song, 2012; Ramalu, Uli, &
Kumar, 2012; Ramalu, Raduan, Kumar, & Uli, 2010; Templer, Tay, & Chandrasekar, 2006).
Cultural intelligence (CQ) refers to individual’s capability to adapt effectively in culturally diverse settings (Earley & Ang, 2003). Researchers pointed out that individual in high CQ can adjust to the culture diverse environment by processing the related cognition, behavior, and interpersonal skill more effectively. On the other hand, some researchers regarded individual differences as critical antecedents of individuals’
cross-cultural adjustment. PsyCap, one type of individual differences, is different from other trait-like constructs such as personality and intelligence. PsyCap is a
“state-like” construct of hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy, which concerns about who you are and was defined as an individual’s positive psychological state of development (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007). PsyCap has been constantly studied as a predictor of employee behaviors, attitudes (e.g., satisfaction and commitment), and performance (Luthans, Avey, Avolio, & Peterson, 2010; Luthans et al., 2007a; Luthans, Avolio, Walumbwa, & Li, 2005; Luthans et al., 2008b; Rego, Marques, Leal, Sousa, & Pina, 2010; Sun, Zhao, Yang, & Fan, 2011). Although the relationship between CQ and cross-cultural adjustment has been constructed
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constantly in the past ten years (Ang et al., 2004; Ang et al., 2007; Lin et al., 2012;
Ramalu et al., 2012; Ramalu et al., 2010; Templer et al., 2006), few researches took the individual differences such as PsyCap into consideration when discussing the intercultural effectiveness.
Few studies focused on how PsyCap influences on individual’s adjustment in a cross-cultural setting. Avey, Wernsing, and Luthans (2008) asserted that individuals high in PsyCap usually hold optimistic outlook and make use of the positive mental resource to adapt to the new change. More empirical studies demonstrated that hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy (four features of PsyCap) had influence on cross-cultural adjustment separately. For example, hope and optimism demonstrated higher possibilities of multicultural interaction success (Peltokorpi & Froese, 2012).
Individuals high in efficacy and resilience were found more satisfaction with life and work, and tend to adjust to stressful life events (Harrison et al., 1996; Luthans et al., 2007a; Palthe, 2004; Tripathi, 2011).
In short, CQ and cross-cultural adjustment are two variables that being adopted to predict intercultural effectiveness frequently in many researches; however, the individual differences of mental status, which gain little attention as exploring cultural related issues. If the level of CQ is a predictor to know individual’s adjustment, and if the features of PsyCap such as hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy have been shown to be critical for individual’s psychological adaptation comfort, then more should be known about the relationships among CQ, PsyCap, perceived supervisor support, and cross-cultural adjustment in the perception of cultural diversity.
Study Purpose
The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships among cultural intelligence (CQ), cross-cultural adjustment, psychological capital (PsyCap), and perceived supervisor support (PSS) through the analysis of data collected from
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foreign labors. The specific aims in this study were (a) to examine how CQ relates to PsyCap and PsyCap relates to cross-cultural adjustment, (b) to identify the mediating effect of PsyCap on the relationship between CQ and cross-cultural adjustment, and (c) to explore the moderating effect of PSS on CQ and cross-cultural adjustment.
Research Questions
To address the issues already outlined and to begin to fill the gaps in the previous research, the present study was designed to address the following research questions:
1. Does CQ have a positive effect on cross-cultural adjustment and its three sub-dimensions?
2. Does CQ have a positive effect on PsyCap?
3. Dose PsyCap have a positive effect on cross-cultural adjustment and its three sub-dimensions?
4. Does PsyCap serve as a mediator between CQ and cross-cultural adjustment, CQ and its three sub-dimensions individually?
5. Does PSS positively moderate the relationship between PsyCap and cross-cultural adjustment and its three sub-dimensions individually?
Definitions of Key Terms Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
CQ refers to an individual’s capability to adapt and perform effectively under the cultural diversity situations (Earley & Ang, 2003). Individuals with high CQ are able to come up with new solutions to novel tasks and interact with people from different cultures successfully (Earley & Ang, 2003; Lee & Templer, 2003).
Cross-cultural Adjustment
Cross-cultural adjustment is the degree of psychological comfort individual feels during the adaptation process of living and working in different cultures (Black &
Stephens, 1989).
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Psychological Capital (PsyCap)
Psychological capital concerns about whom you are and was defined as an individual’s positive psychological state of development and characterized by hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy (Luthans et al., 2007b).
Perceived Supervisor Support (PSS)
Perceived supervisor support was defined as employees’ general beliefs concerning the extent to which supervisors value their contributions and care about their well-being (Kottke & Sharafinski, 1988).
Foreign Labors
This study defines foreign labors as blue collar labors being legally employed in Taiwan according to the Employment Services Act (http://law.moj.gov.tw).
Research Procedure
The procedure of this study is shown below. Please see Figure 1.1.
Research background and purpose Literatrue review
Hypothesis formation
Research framework construction
Questionnaire design
Data collection and processing
Hypothesis testing
Results and conclusion Figure 1.1. Research procedure
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