Social Support and Life‐Domain Interactions among Assigned and Self‐Initiated Expatriates

• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Felix Ballesteros Leiva,Gwénaëlle Poilpot‐Rocaboy,Sylvie St‐Onge
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12149

Social Support and Life-Domain Interactions

among Assigned and Self-Initiated Expatriates

FELIX BALLESTEROS LEIVA,

1

GWÉNAËLLE POILPOT-ROCABOY

2

and SYLVIE ST-ONGE

1

1

Département de Management, HEC-Montréal, Canada

2

IGR-IAE de Rennes, Université de Rennes 1, France, CREM-CNRS

Based upon conservation of resources theory,this study is the first to explore (1)the relations between life-domain

support received by internationally mobile employees (IMEs) from their organization, supervisors, coworkers, and

family and friends and their life-domain conflicts and enrichments in two directions: work life →personal life

(WL →PL) and personal life →work life (PL →WL) and (2) whether these links are different between assigned

expatriates (AEs) and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). The questionnaire data were collected from 182 SIEs and

102 AEs. Resultsfrom multivariate analysesshow that (1) the moreIMEs perceive receivinglife-domain support from

their family and friends and their organization, the less they report life-domain conflicts and (2) the more IMEs

perceive receiving life-domain support from their coworkers, the more they report life-domain enrichments. Finally,

it appears that AEs’perceived life-domain organizational support is positively related to their perceived WL →PL

enrichmentsand that SIEs’perceived life-domain coworkersupport is negatively relatedto their life-domain conflicts

in both directions.

Keywords: life-domain interactions; social support; assigned expatriates; self-initiated expatriates;work and family

interactions

Introduction

Many environmental changes have increased

organizations’demand for internationally mobile

employees (IMEs) to be able to trade competitively and

to transfer know-how and management values abroad

(Andresenand Biemann, 2013; Baruch et al., 2013). From

an employer’s perspective, the successful management of

IMEs is crucial, given thehigh financial and human costs

of their premature returns (breaches of job contracts),

stress, dissatisfaction, or even low performance that

damages relations with business partners (Selmer and

Lauring, 2014; Kempen et al., 2015). From an individual

perspective, international mobility success is also

important for IMEs since their premature return and

expatriation failure generate various negative impacts

with respect to their compensation, self-confidence, and

family relationships (Fischlmayr and Kollinger, 2010;

Kempen et al., 2015). Going abroad creates pressures on

IMEs’life-domain interactions (Richardson, 2006;

Schütter and Boerner, 2013; Rosenbusch et al., 2015),

all the more so as most of them are accompanied by a

partner or a family (Shaffer et al., 2001). Challenges come

from the need to adjust to a new institutional contextwith

a different culture and language, new education, daycare

and healthcare systems, and working conditions

characterized by higher complexity, ambiguity, load,

temporal pressure, excessive traveling, inflexible working

hours and reduced time to spend with family members

(Grant-Vallone and Ensher, 2001; Fischlmayr and

Kollinger, 2010; Lazarova et al., 2010; Richardson

et al., 2015; Rosenbusch et al., 2015). Additional

challenges arise for all IMEs’family members such as

safety fears, thechildren’s anguish and u ncertainty related

to identity formation, the breakup of friendships and the

disruption of schooling, or to the partner’smoodwhen

the partner has lost a job but also forgone a career,

financial independence, and extended family support

(Lazarova et al., 2010).

Studies confirm the necessary adaptations regarding

life-domain levels arising from working abroad to reduce

stress, ill-being, dissatisfaction, and poor relations among

IMEs and their family (Selmer and Lauring, 2014;

Kempen et al., 2015; Ballesteros-Leiva et al., 2017).

Surprisingly, interactions between IMEs’life domains

have attracted scant attention from scholars to date

Correspondence: Sylvie St-Onge, Département de Management, HEC-

Montréal,Canada. E-mail sylvie.st-onge@hec.ca

European Management Review, Vol. 15, 293–313, (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12149

©2017 European Academy of Management

(Grant-Vallone and Ensher, 2001; Kempen et al., 2015;

Richardson et al., 2015). Previous studies have focused

rather on IMEs’adaptation, adjustment, or integration in

their host country (Shaffer et al., 2001). This study aims

to fill this gap by investigating IMEs’life-domain support

and their life-domain interactions (Kraimer and Wayne,

2004; Mäkelä and Suutari, 2011).

This study is innovative in many respects. First, this is

the only study to explore the respective and relative

influences of life-domain support IMEsreceive from their

employer, their supervisor, their coworkers, and their

family members and friends upon their life-domain

interactions. We innovate by using conservation of

resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989,2002) and recent

theoretical work linking this theory with life-domain

interactions (ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012). In

addition, the study applies the resource scarcity (that is,

life-domain conflicts) and the resource expansion (that

is, life-domain enrichments) perspectives and takes into

account different directions of interaction between life

domains in response to scholars’call (e.g., Schütter and

Boerner, 2013; Mäkelä and Suutari, 2015b). Finally, this

study is the first to examine whether these links are

different between two heterogeneous groups of IMEs

(Andresen et al., 2015): assigned expatriates (AEs), who

are sent by their home employer to international posts,

and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs), who seek

employment abroad on their own initiative and are hired

as local employees in the host country. Considering the

particular characteristics of these two types of IMEs

(Andersen et al., 2012) and the fact that SIEs have less

access to support from theiremployers than AEs (Mäkelä

and Suutari, 2015b),it is worth exploring whether the link

between social support and life-domain interactions

differs between SIEs and AEs. Exploring the differences

between these two groups is also important because the

proportion of SIEs is increasing, since their status is

considered an attractive alternative to that of traditional

corporate expatriates upon whom previous studies have

largely focused (Tharenou, 2013).

This paper is organized as follows. First, we review

COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2002) and we summarize

what we know about the relationship between IMEs’

perceived life-domain support and their perceived life-

domain interactions. We then propose research

hypotheses on the relations between four sources of

life-domain support received by IMEs and their life-

domain interactions and the potential differences

between AEs and SIEs with regards to some of these

links. Then, the method, measures and statistical

procedures, and the results of hypothesis testing are

presented. Finally, a discussion of the results indicates

their theoretical and managerial relevance as well as

their limitations; suggestions for future research are

proposed.

In this paper, we use the term ‘personal life’ratherthan

‘family’, in line with other researchers who prefer the

terms ‘private life’,‘personal life’,or‘home life’in order

to include all issues and activities in the domain such as

dependents, spouse, leisure, studies, or community life

(ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012; Kempen et al.,

2015). Similarly, we use the expression ‘work life’rather

than ‘work’to include all issues and activities in the

domain such as work responsibilities, relations at work,

traveling, representing the organization in the community,

or receiving coworkers at home.

Literature review

To date, many researchers have investigated the link

between various forms or sources of life-domain support

and life-domain interactions among domestic employees.

In this section, we first present conservation of resources

(COR) theory and recent theoretical work linking this

theory with life-domain interactions. Second, we review

the outcome of these studies among domestic employees,

and then we summarize the few theoretical texts and

studies dealing with the links between the IMEs’home-

domain support received from various sources and their

life-domain interactions. Finally, we present our research

hypotheses and other links we intend exploring without

proposing any expected relationships.

Life-domain social support from the perspective of the

conservation of resources (COR) theory

According to COR theory, people strive to acquire,

maintain, protect,and build resources since havinggreater

resources increases their ability to solve problems and

reduces the likelihood of having their well-being

negatively affected by the drain of resources that occurs

during stressful situations (Hobfoll, 1989). Resources

might be defined as ‘things that people value, with an

emphasis on objects, states, conditions, and other things’

(Hobfoll, 1989: 519), as ‘anything perceived by the

individual to help attain his or her goals’(Halbesleben

et al., 2014: 1338) or as ‘those objects (e.g., a house),

personal characteristics (e.g., optimism), conditions (e.g.,

marriage), or energies (e.g., time, money, or physical

energy) that are valued by the individual or serve as a

means for the attainment of these objects, personal

characteristics, conditions, or energies’(ten Brummelhuis

and Bakker, 2012: 547). COR theory posits that ‘those

with greater resources are less vulnerable to resource loss

and more capable of orchestrating resource gain.

Conversely, those with fewer resources are more

vulnerable to resource loss and less capable of resource

gain’(Hobfoll, 2001: 349).

This first main postulate of COR theory is in line with

what role theory or the life-domain literature call the

294 F. Ballesteros-Leiva et al.

©2017 European Academy of Management