Biculturalism: The plus side of leaving home? The effects of second -culture exposure on integrative complexity and its consequences for overseas performance

Increased global competition has placed a premium on the development of globally competent employees who can successfully span the boundaries of their host and home organizations by integrating the best of their own business practices with those of other cultures. Such skills, which have been suggested to develop during overseas assignments, are crucial to the success of multinational organizations. Consequently, the role played by second-culture exposure in shaping these socio-cognitive skills as well as the understanding of how such factors are associated with expatriates' successful job performance are increasingly important. However, both the expatriate literature and the acculturation research have given little theoretical and empirical attention to these issues.;Based on the rarely tested assumption that the better expatriates adjust, the better they will perform, much of the previous research on overseas assignments has focused on the factors that affect adjustment to local culture. As a result, little research has focused on actual performance while working abroad and very little attention has been given to other potential mediators of successful performance. The acculturation research has also traditionally focused on psychological adaptation. As in the international management literature, the factors that shape intrapsychic attitudes towards acculturation as well as the role played by second-culture exposure in shaping cognitive processes have been overlooked.;This paper begins to fill these knowledge gaps by delineating the factors that affect the adoption of specific acculturation strategies and by focusing on the power of second-culture exposure to stimulate integratively complex cognitions that give people the flexibility to shift rapidly from one cultural-meaning system to another. I propose a model, influenced by prior work on value pluralism and accountability, that outlines the basic mechanisms that determine acculturation choice and that produce both individual and situational variation in integrative complexity of social functioning. Complexity, in turn, will have important implications for overseas success, particularly managerial performance, which refers to the activities required to maintain and support the technical core of an employee's functional area or department.;Specifically, I suggest that individuals who internalize the values of both their new and old cultural groups (i.e., biculturals) will be more integratively complex in the cultural domain than those who adhere to the values of only one cultural group (i.e., separated or assimilated individuals). This will be due to the greater dissonance biculturals experience during the acculturation process. Further, this pattern will generalize to other domains, although levels of complexity for all acculturating individuals should not be expected to be as high. These hypotheses were supported in a study of Asian-American college students (study 1) and replicated in a sample of Israelis working in the US (study 2).;I further suggest that biculturals will reach higher levels of managerial performance than will assimilated and separated individuals due to their greater integrative complexity, which provide the individual with the capability to accept new ideas and see more than one way of approaching and solving problems. Specifically, because managerial performance is linked to activities such as planning, coordinating, and decision making, higher complexity will enable the individual to be open to disconfirming information, engage in effective information search, and be comfortable with uncertainty thereby allowing him or her to perform effectively. Thus complexity will mediate the relationship between acculturation strategy and managerial performance and this relationship will hold irrespective of levels of adjustment. I also explore the boundary conditions of this relationship. I argue that the advantages of greater complexity will be limited to the domain of managerial performance and will not generalize to technical performance. Technical performance, which refers to the core substantive tasks related to a person's professional functional area, will be better predicted by a variety of personality and demographic characteristics that facilitate knowledge acquisition in the individual's professional discipline and industry. Results from a study of 100 Israelis working in the U.S. confirm these hypotheses (study 2). Finally, I test the direction of causality hypothesized in the model---that biculturals' higher levels of integrative complexity are the result of the acculturation process. This hypothesis was supported in an experimental study using priming manipulations (study 3).;Taken together, the three studies provide a systematic test of the cognitive effects of second culture exposure and their consequences for overseas performance. Implications for international management and acculturation research are discussed.