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Fostering overseas success: A meta-analysis 91 5.1 Introduction For multinational organizations, international assignments are crucial in building and developing global talent pools, fostering knowledge transfer, and enhancing international business strategy and opportunities (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; McNulty & Tharenou, 2004; Suutari & Brewster, 2003). Yet, expatriation often has less then optimal success in reaching the intended goals of organizations (BGRS, 2015, 2016) despite their significant costs ($250k to $1M in Nowak & Linder, 2016). From the employee’s perspective, international assignments offer developmental opportunities and such as developing managerial and cross-cultural skills, that often are a requisite for progression to upper management (Spreitzer, McCall, & Mahoney, 1997; Stahl, Chua, Caligiuri, Cerdin, & Taniguchi, 2009; Suutari & Brewster, 2003). Nevertheless, unsuccessful expatriation may harm expatriates’ personal career and well-being as well as that of their family, who have often made personal sacrifices for the assignment (Adelman, 1988; Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005; Black, Gregersen, & Mendenhall, 1992; Copeland & Norell, 2002; Lazarova, Westman, & Shaffer, 2010). Although the stakes are thus high during international assignment, recent surveys show that many are not successful in the eyes of organizations and employees alike (BGRS, 2015, 2016). Fortunately, successful expatriation can be fostered by social support from the work, the family, and community domains. In the work domain, expatriates interact with multiple organizations and their members. Sending and receiving organizations implement various practices to assist, motivate, and take care of the expatriate and his/her family, including logistical services, extensive remuneration packages, and cross- cultural training (CCT; Guzzo, Noonan, & Elron, 1994). Coworkers provide tangible aid, helping with daily work tasks, assisting in the acculturation and socialization process, or directly reducing work demands (Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008). Spouses and other family members offer emotional support to the overseas work and life challenges expatriates face and provide encouragement to prevent withdrawal from the assignment. Daily interactions with friends or acquaintances in the general community members may hold emotional value and provide opportunities to learn cultural behaviors and habits (Caliguiri, 2000; Johnson, Kristof-Brown, Van Vianen, De Pater, & Klein, 2003). Agents in different domains may offer different kinds of resources, and can therefore result in different benefits (Alcover, Rico, Turnley, & Bolino, 2017). Agents differ in terms of their cultural, hierarchical, and/or physical distance to expatriates. Cultural differences in (in)formal communication, in work behaviors, in interpersonal behaviors, and in management styles may make social interactions more difficult (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Byrne, 1971; Gudykunst & Nishada, 2001). The hierarchical nature of exchange relationships at work may put social interactions in a different light and may allow organizational agents to be more or less effective in providing specific types of social support (Raabe & Beehr, 2003). Finally, some agents are physically close to the expatriate (e.g., trailing family or local team members) whereas others reside back in the home country and can only provide support virtually. These characteristics of agents likely