When Yankee Comes Home: Factors Related to Expatriate and Spouse Repatriation Adjustment
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JOURNALOF INTERNATIONALBUSINESS STUDIES, FOURTHQUARTER 1991
In addition to the theoretical rationale for furtherassessment of repatriation adjustment,there are several pragmaticreasons for understandingthe process more fully. Initial evidence suggests the average repatriationfailure rate, that is, individualswho returnfrom overseas assignmentsbut then leave their firm within one year after repatriation,is about 25% [Black 1989; O'Boyle 1989]. This rate parallels thatof prematurereturnsfrom foreign assignments [Misa & Fabricatore 1979; Tung 1988]. If, as was recently reported in the Wall StreetJournal [O'Boyle 1989], the average compensation package for an American expatriate manager is over $300,000 and the average stay overseas is three-four years [Black 1989], then an American multinational corporation (MNC) spends approximately $1,000,000 on each expatriate over the duration of the foreign assignment. If approximately one in four returningexpatriates leave their firm, this represents a substantial financial and human capital loss to the MNC, especially if the skills, knowledge, and experience that the individual gains are importantto the firm and scarce in the internal or external labor markets.Thus, the practicalreasons for investigating the repatriationadjustmentprocess seem as compelling as those for understandingexpatriate cross-cultural adjustment. LITERATUREREVIEW One of the primary theoretical processes related to adjustment, whether it is repatriationadjustment, cross-cultural adjustment, or adjustment after a domestic transfer,is reductionof uncertainty[Black 1988; Brett 1980; Brislin 1981; Feldman & Brett 1983; Louis 1980]. Individualsenter a new environment and are often uncertain as to what is acceptable and unacceptable or appropriateand inappropriate.The adjustmentprocess involves the reduction of that uncertaintyby learning what is acceptable and by being able to act accordingly [Brislin 1981]. The phenomenon of "culture shock" is largely a set of negative affective reactions to encounters that demonstrate to individuals in a new, foreign environment that they lack a complete and accurate set of schematas for understandingand appropriatelyacting in the new, currentsituation [Oberg 1960; Torbiorn 1982]. In fact, Gullahornand Gullahorn [1963] argued that the cross-cultural adjustment process that leads to a u-shaped curve of adjustment, in which the bottom of the curve is the strongest point of culture shock, can also be applied to repatriation adjustmentas well. Consequently,they arguedfor an extension of the u-curve hypothesis into a w-curve hypothesis. Both Harvey [1983] and Adler [1981] point out that returningmanagers often lack a currentunderstandingof the home country and that the process of reducing that uncertainty is a central component of repatriationadjustment.Based on these theoretical arguments of uncertainty reductio
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