Home away from home: community embeddedness and expatriate retention cognitions

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that examines the influences of expatriate community relationship building behaviors on community embeddedness and community embeddedness on expatriate retention cognitions. The authors further investigate the moderating role of organizational identification. Design/methodology/approach Survey data from 127 expatriates in the USA were collected and analyzed. The authors used multiple (moderator) hierarchical regression analyses to test the hypotheses. In addition, simple slopes analyses were conducted to further understand the interaction effects. Findings The results demonstrate that community relationship building behaviors positively influence expatriate community embeddedness, and the latter is associated with stronger retention cognitions. In addition, the paper finds that, for individuals who have lower levels of organizational identification, community embeddedness is particularly important. Research limitations/implications This study is based on cross-sectional and self-report data, which limits the ability to draw definitive conclusions about causality. Thus, more multi-source and longitudinal data from different expatriate populations would increase the validity and the generalizability of findings. The theory and empirical evidence indicate the importance of community embeddedness, particularly when organizational identification is low, for expatriates’ retention cognitions. Practical implications This study examines the important role of community relationship building behaviors on community embeddedness, and the role of community embeddedness in expatriates’ intention to stay. Originality/value This paper integrates the unique view of personal resources associated with different social contexts (i.e. community and organizational contexts) in expatriate studies.

Wanderlust to wonderland? : Exploring key issues in expatriate careers: Individual, organizational, and societal insights

“…Mitchell et al (2001) originally developed job embeddedness theory to explain the forces keeping employees in their jobs rather than promoting their turnover. In line with their theory, research proves that job embeddedness has consistently predicted employee retention in both domestic (Jiang et al, 2012) and international mobility contexts (Meuer et al, 2019;Yunlu et al, 2018). The impact of job embeddedness, however, has gone far beyond employee retention.…”

Linking employee perceptions and employee attitudes through their levels of organizational identification: a field investigation in India

“…Furthermore, coincidental to employees' organizational identification is their assumption that the organization being their job provider can be a sustained source of resources that shall help them perform better and achieve a positive work-state (Wollard and Shuck, 2011). Following this, employees would manifest an enhanced state of loyalty and attachment to their organization (Harris and Cameron, 2005;Yunlu et al, 2018). Hence, the following study hypothesis is posited.…”

Expatriate partners’ personality and its influence on acculturation into a new cultural context: Examining the role of dispositional affectivity

“…General adjustment concerns individuals' degree of comfort with a variety of aspects of the host country environment, for instance, food, living and housing conditions, or healthcare. Community embeddedness is a fairly novel variable in expatriation research (e.g., Andresen, 2015;Chen and Shaffer, 2017;Tharenou and Caulfield, 2010;Yunlu et al, 2018). The construct originated in turnover research and is one element of the overall job embeddedness construct (see for a review: Lee et al, 2014).…”