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Fostering overseas success: A meta-analysis 95 refer to the cultural, physical, or hierarchical distance (or closeness) between the supporting agent and the expatriate. In this meta-analysis, we examine specifically whether the mobility status and physical proximity of supporting agents affects the value of their social support. First, expatriates are expected to seek and attach more value to support from other expatriates than to support from host country nationals (HCNs). The similarity-attraction hypothesis (Byrne, 1971) suggests that individuals with similar attitudes, opinions, abilities, or behaviors are more strongly attracted to each other and therefore develop relationships of a higher quality. Additionally, anxiety/uncertainty management theory (Gudykunst & Nishida, 2001) proposes that interpersonal communication is more straining and less effective if agents are culturally different. Hence, while HCNs are constrained by cultural and/or language barriers, social support as provided by other expatriates will be perceived as relatively more valuable as these agents have personally experienced similar cross-cultural transitions. Earlier research demonstrates that expatriates perceive more social support from other expatriates, as compared to HCNs, and that this support is perceived as more emotionally valuable (Adelman, 1988; Johnson et al., 2003). However, the opposite may apply to adjustment outcomes. Research shows expatriates benefit more from the support received from local HCNs, whose assistance would include valuable information that allows the learning of norms, values, and appropriate behaviors in the new culture (Caliguiri, 2000; Johnson et al., 2003). In summary of the above, we expect that the social support offered by expatriates relates more strongly to commitment, performance, and retention outcomes, while social support by HCN agents is more valuable for adjustment outcomes. Hypothesis 3. Social support by HCN agents relates more strongly to (a) cross-cultural adjustment while social support by expatriate agents relates more strongly to (b) commitment, (c) performance, and (d) retention. Second, we expect physical proximity to influence the value of social support. Agents in an expatriate’s home country network may experience difficulties being of assistance due to the physical distance: they cannot physically assist with everyday tasks, they lack cultural and situational information, and they may have trouble providing warmth or empathy. Some early evidence demonstrates such effects for work-domain support. Benson and Pattie (2009) found that home country supervisors typically “ lack the local knowledge necessary to help expatriates adjust ” while host supervisors “ understand the local culture and can provide the mentoring necessary for successful adjustment ” (p. 62). Home country supervisory support would still stimulate commitment and performance criteria as expatriates seek to validate the decision to deploy them overseas. Littrell (2007) found that support from peers and mentors in the home country was more emotionally-oriented whereas host country agents provided more adjustment-oriented support. Hence, the latter had stronger effects on expatriates’ socialization, cross-cultural adjustment, and retention (Litrell, 2007). In sum, we expect social support by host country agents to have a stronger influence on expatriates’ adjustment and retention whereas we expect no differences for commitment and performance outcomes.