Career issues and international adjustment of business expatriates

Western business expatriates, mostly from the USA, France, the UK and Sweden, responded to a mail survey exploring career issues and their degree of international adjustment. Unexpectedly, it was found that meeting career goals within the corporation does not significantly affect work adjustment, but it does have a positive impact on the other two dimensions of sociocultural adjustment, general and interaction adjustment. As predicted, it does also have a positive affect on psychological adjustment, as measured by subjective well‐being. Surprisingly, none of the other variables depicting career issues for expatriates, career development fit, wrong/ useful career move, and supportive corporate attitude to expatriation, had any significant effect on either sociocultural or psychological adjustment. These unexpected findings are discussed in detail and approaches for further research in this area are recommended.

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