The Other Half of the Picture: Antecedents of Spouse Cross-Cultural Adjustment
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would fail or be miserable because they didn't have the split level home on a dead end street, the Jello, the cotton bread, the prepared foods, etc.-or many would have the experience of their life. Whether the family's experience is miserable or exciting depends on the spouse. When the spouse adjusts, goes, and does it, everything else follows.... [An American HRM executive] *J. StewartBlackis an assistantprofessorin The Amos TuckSchoolof Business Administrationat DartmouthCollege. His teachingand researchinterestsfocus primarilyon internationalhumanresourcemanagementissues. **Hal B. Gregersenis an assistantprofessorin the School of Business, Behrend College, at the PennsylvaniaStateUniversity.In additionto his generalteaching and researchinterestsconcerninginternationalhumanresourcemanagement,he also focuses on the process and outcomesof multiplefacets of commitmentin internationalanddomesticpersonnel. Received:May 1990;Revised:August& December1990;Accepted:January1991. 461
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JOURNALOF INTERNATIONALBUSINESS STUDIES, THIRD QUARTER 1991
These days one can hardly look in the popular or academic business press and not find articles on internationalcompetition and the need for global managers who (1) understandmore than the U.S. domestic market, (2) can successfully interactwith people from variouscultures,and (3) can effectively live and work in foreign countries. It seems, however, that many of these articles discuss the development of global managers as though they were isolated individuals without spouses, families, or friends [Harvey 1985]. Recent research has indicated that spouses are a major factor in the success or failure of expatriates [Harris& Moran 1989; Harvey 1985; Tung 1981]. However, much of this work has relied on the opinions of U.S. international human resource managementexecutives or anecdotalevidence. Nevertheless recent empirical research [Black 1988; Black & Stephens 1989] has found a significant and positive relationshipbetween spouse and expatriateadjustment. Still the question remains, What factors affect spouse cross-cultural adjustment?If spouse adjustmentis indeed related to expatriateadjustment and to the success or failure of the internationalassignment, then it seems critical to gain a better understandingof the factors that facilitate or inhibit spouse cross-cultural adjustment.Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to examine empirically a wide variety of factors that theoretically relate to spouse cross-cultural adjustment.The major contributions of this study are the empirical examination of factors related to spouse adjustment by collecting data directly from American expatriate spouses in a number of different countries around the world. Based on these findings, both implications for futureresearchand for practice are explored. We begin by briefly reviewing what is known about international assignments in general an
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