Ridderprint

Chapter 4 76 repatriation policy (Florkowski & Fogel, 1999). Its results demonstrated that financial support particularly stimulated commitment and expatriates’ intentions to remain on the assignment. Furthermore, a clear repatriation policy was beneficial for expatriates’ commitment to the parent organization but decreased their commitment to the subsidiary. Home country mentoring and realistic previews had no effects on expatriates’ adjustment, commitment or leave intentions. Again, these findings highlight that the impact of organizational support seems to depend on the type or content of the support and the criteria of IA success under investigation. Multiple organizational units share the responsibility to provide support during IAs, introducing a second moderating factor. At least two organizational units are involved in the expatriation process: a sending parent organization and a receiving host subsidiary organization. While scholars acknowledge that expatriates are in a dual employment relationship – involving psychological contracts with both the parent and the subsidiary organization – this has not frequently been accounted for in empirical investigations of organizational support. Only three out of 26 studies in this review have examinedwhether it matters which of the organizational units is considered the provider of support. These studies demonstrate that support by each unit has distinct value for the commitment (Liu & Ipe, 2010) and adjustment of expatriates (Kraimer et al., 2001) but that expatriate retention is only stimulated by support from the parent organization (De Paul Chism, 2014). This raises questions regarding the referent organization(s) in the other 23 studies as well as regarding the relationship between parent and subsidiary POS and the other success criteria. The third moderating factor involves the context in which the support is provided. Organizational support may be more or less valuable depending on the assignment context and the expatriate him-/herself. Regarding assignment contexts, on the one hand, the value of social support seems to increase with the level of hardship. For example, the effect of POS on expatriate performance was stronger under conditions of high stress (Bader et al., 2015), high demands (Kawai & Mohr, 2015) and local prejudice (Shen & Jiang, 2015). On the other hand, the value of social support may be affected by the availability of supportive resources in general. For example, synergetic (Liu & Ipe, 2010; Takeuchi et al., 2009), complementary (Kraimer & Wayne, 2004; Kraimer et al., 2001; Supangco &Mayrhofer, 2015) and substitution (Chen, 2010; Shen & Jiang, 2015; Supangco & Mayrhofer, 2015) effects have been found between different forms of social support from different sources. Regarding individual differences, the value of support may vary from one expatriate to the other. For instance, POS only stimulated performance among expatriates who identified with their organization (Showail et al., 2013). 4.4.3 Conclusion In conclusion, POS typically has a positive impact on the success of IAs. It has a direct positive influence on more proximate success criteria, such as expatriate satisfaction, commitment and adjustment. The effect of POS on the retention of expatriates and the completion of assignments is also positive but may be partially indirect. Regarding the performance of expatriates, the impact of POS is typically indirect, although direct effects were found if the assistance involved financial support or was provided under certain

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw