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Chapter 4 68 4.3 Theoretical Paradigms In the broadest sense, social support can be defined as the assistance and protection that one party provides to another (Shumaker & Brownell, 1984). More specifically, scholars have proposed that social support manifests itself in four types or forms. Emotional support is the affective component of social support and involves the provision of care, empathy, love and trust. Instrumental support consists of more concrete assistance, in the form of tangible resources, services or aid. Informational support relates to the provision of information to assist with general problem-solving. Finally, appraisal support involves the provision of information for self-evaluation (House, 1981). Multiple theories link social support to the success of IAs and the theories used by the 39 articles in this review can be clustered into three theoretical paradigms: a stress, a social capital and a relational paradigm. First, ten articles (26%; Table 4.3) refer to theories on stress management. International assignments imply major transitions in terms of work and living environment, job content, work roles and/or employment status. Such changes can be stressful and threatening as they introduce considerable uncertainty (Ashford & Taylor, 1990). For example, the behavioral patterns associated with the new culture in general and the new work role in particular may not be clear and may thus cause stress (Kahn et al., 1964; Katz & Kahn, 1978). Additional uncertaintymay arise because of changes in non- work roles due to the overseas transition (Minuchin, 1974), and the resulting strain may have implications for an expatriate’s work environment as well (Lazarova et al., 2010). In summary, the general notion of theories in the stress paradigm is that an IA causes stress and adjustment issues due to uncertainty, which can be minimized by providing expatriates with resources through social support (Ashford & Taylor, 1990; Gudykunst & Nishida, 2001). Second, ten articles (26%; Table 4.3) use social capital, social networks and social learning theories to demonstrate how an expatriate’s professional network can stimulate IA success. According to social capital theory, an expatriate’s social network holds certain resources that can be accessed by the expatriate (Lin, 1999). This means that expatriates can call on their social ties for assistance, including financial or material benefits, emotional support, task assistance, information, visibility, legitimacy and/or sponsorship in a social system (Seibert et al., 2001). By mobilizing this social capital, expatriates make sense of, behave appropriately and perform effectively in their work environment. This relates to social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), which posits that expatriates learn how to behave in their new cultural and work environment by observing and interacting with their social ties. In this sense, expatriates gain information about their expected role and work behaviors and about the cultural norms and social conventions of the host country through interactions with their colleagues (Aycan, 1997; Black et al., 1991; Caligiuri, 2000). Altogether, this “social capital” paradigm proposes that expatriates draw resources from their professional social networks, which allows them to behave effectively in their overseas environment. Third, seventeen studies (44%; Table 4.3) refer to theories based on relational exchange and psychological contracting. In general, social support can be viewed as a