Expatriates’ willingness to adjust their symbolic leadership abroad. An analysis of how culture affects expatriates’ use of symbolic interaction

Christian Linder

Journal of Global Mobility, 2015, vol. 3, issue 3, 244-272

Abstract: Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relation between perceived cultural distances and the willingness to adjust symbolic leadership by expatriates. Further, it is asked whether this adjustment has the potential to increase their acceptance as leader by the foreign workforce. Design/methodology/approach - – The research derives testable propositions from symbolic leadership theory and the theory about cultural distance and transfers them into a structural equation model in order to identify the impact of cultural distance on expatriates’ adjustment effort. Therefore, an empirical investigation among German expatriates in the Philippines was conducted. Findings - – The study contributes to the understanding of symbolic leadership in several unique ways. It is found that there is a relationship between perceived cultural distance and a willingness for symbolic leadership behavior in order to reduce social sanctions caused by unappropriated symbolism. The study shows that willingness to adopt foreign symbols does not lead to an increased acceptance. Originality/value - – This research implies that the willingness alone is not sufficient if the appropriate cultural knowledge and required skills do not exist. Thus, this study points to the importance of expatriates’ cultural knowledge for the success of foreign assignments.

Keywords: Cross-cultural management; Expatriates; Cultural distance; Symbolic leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jgmpps:v:3:y:2015:i:3:p:244-272

DOI: 10.1108/JGM-05-2014-0013

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Global Mobility is currently edited by Professor Jan Selmer

More articles in Journal of Global Mobility from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().