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Expatriate support and success: A systematic review 77 circumstances. Finally, the assistance provided by parent and subsidiary organizations can have unique, differential and/or synergetic effects. Further implications for POS in research and practice are presented in the discussion section. 4.5 Support by Organizational Members Separately from the organization, organizational members can function as a source of social support for expatriates. These organizational members may differ in terms of their proximity to the expatriate with regard to organizational hierarchy, geographical proximity, situational context and cultural similarity. Following theories on social penetration and social attraction (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Byrne, 1971; Gudykunst & Nishida, 2001; Ibarra, 1992), this (perceived) proximity can influence the social support these organizational members are willing and able to provide to expatriates. First, the hierarchical distance of the source may influence the value of its social support due to perceived discretion and the content of the support. On the one hand, the extent to which social support is perceived as voluntary or discretionary has been shown to increase its value (Eisenberger et al., 1997). While supervisors provide assistance on a daily basis, this can be viewed as part of their job. Expatriates may experience support from their peers less frequently but on a more voluntary basis (Ng & Sorensen, 2008). Although social support from subordinates can be as voluntary as that of peers, it may be harder to accept or may even be perceived as brown-nosing. Social support by mentors seems to be more of a hybrid, as it can be more or less formally arranged and hierarchical (e.g., from seniors, supervisors or peers). On the one hand, the type of social support provided may be influenced by the hierarchical level of the source. For instance, while each individual can provide all types of social support, some hierarchical roles (e.g., supervisor) provide better opportunities to offer certain types of support (e.g., appraisal). In sum, the hierarchical proximity of the source may thus influence the type of support provided as well as its formality. Furthermore, organizational members in multinational organizations can differ in terms of their geographical locations, employment status and/or cultural backgrounds. The geographical distance between two organizational members influences how frequently they interact or whether contact is face-to-face or virtual (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Claus et al., 2015). Moreover, an IA is quite an experience and organizational members who have not had such experiences or are currently not on an assignment themselves may struggle to provide suitable assistance to expatriates (Johnson et al., 2003). Finally, differences in cultural norms and values may cause a (perceived) distance between individuals. A vast amount of research demonstrates that cultural factors can lead to ambiguity in communication, can inhibit relational bonding and can have implications for the provision of social support (Aycan et al., 2000; Feldman & Bolino, 1999; Gudykunst & Nishida, 2001; House et al., 2004; Peltokorpi, 2007; Sias et al., 2008). The following sections discuss how social support by specific organizational members has been found to affect the success of IAs. As the majority of reviewed studies investigated the support provided by a specific hierarchical group of organizational members, this section discusses the results according to the same division of members. For three groups – supervisors, mentors and co-workers – the influence of their support