Expatriate Adjustment from the Inside out an Autoethnographic Account

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Cross-cultural management has become much more important. Good cross-cultural management can improve the competence of employees. So what should we do to develop the intercultural competence in enterprises?

1. Development of cross-cultural training

For expatriates, an integrated cross-cultural training can reduce the culture shock, and shorten time to adapt to a new culture, also to make them in a relatively short period of time to control the work skill. There are four steps to train the employees:

1) Provide practical information about local living conditions;

2) Learning the local politic, economic and culture;

3) Get local cultural awareness information;

4) Cognitive and behavioral techniques combined with hands-on learning activities

2. Improve self-efficacy of employees

In cross-cultural adaptation process, self-efficacy plays a very important role. The so-called self-efficacy refers to "people have beliefs to complete a task or work , it is not real about the technique , but their self- confidence to have this work done remarkably.

In work, the impact of self-efficacy of force is mainly reflected in the work attitude and work performance. To improve employee self-efficacy, companies can use the following three strategies:

1) Provide some information about the characteristic of task and the guideline about how to control these factors;

2) Provide training to improve the ability to work directly or guide employees how to properly use the ability to complete the work;

3) Help employees understand the tasks required to conduct, analyze and psychological tactics.

3. Improve the intercultural communication competence

Intercultural communication competence plays also an important role. It could be divided into 3: First, the process of observing things, including the beliefs, values, attitudes, worldview and social organization. Second, the language process, including language and mindset. The last non-language process, including the use of non-verbal behavior, the concept of time and space. To achieve effective communication, we must respect the local culture and social customs. In order to improve cross-cultural communication, reduce communication errors, some researchers proposed cultural empathy theory, the proposed cross-cultural communication by development in the communication process.

Conclusion: Many people who encourage intercultural competences are coming to understand that people either are competent jointly, or are incompetent, but there is no such thing as one person being interculturally competent alone. Only through joint construction of a relationship in which people listen to one another can individuals demonstrate their intercultural competences. And with the reinforce of the intercultural competence, the acculturation will become easier to the people.

References:

- Call for Papers for a Special Issue on Culture Mixing: Its Nature and Psychological Implications. (2014).Journal Of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(9), 1509-1509. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022114549291

- Sreeleakha, P. (2014). Managing culture shock and reverse culture shock of Indian citizenship employees.IJMP, 7(3), 250. http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/ijmp.2014.063597

- What is Culture Shock, and What Can I do to Avoid it?. (2016). Hziegler.com. Retrieved 9 March 2016, from http://www.hziegler.com/articles/culture-shock.html

- What Is Culture Shock?. (2016). Internations.org. Retrieved 9 March 2016, from https://www.internations.org/magazine/what-is-culture-shock-15332