Personality traits, a fundamental factor for expatriate performance

Résumé du document

My topic aims at proposing a relation between our personality traits and our performance abroad. Nowadays, expatriates represent a real competitive advantage for multinational companies (MNCs). This research could help companies to understand how important personality is when selecting criteria for foreign assignment, in order to anticipate their employees success in their position and adaptation to the host country. On the other side, it could be the first support for youngsters who want to live and work abroad, where culture, habits and way of living and working are different from those of the parent country. I hope my research will enable them to evaluate the place where they could perform better, according to their personality. It could also give a piece of answer to current expatriates or repatriates who (have) fail(ed) in their assignment. In a sense, my topic could meet their interests because their working life is shorter than youngsters and they tend more and more to refuse risk, I mean expatriation. Moreover, the existing work on linkage of personality traits to expatriate performance is quite weak. I do not pretend that my research has a strong validity, but it provides a first regard to people interested in, and opens the door for them to other topics on the subject.

Extraits

[...] Table 16 Which factors are obstacles to success in your assignment? Extra-work relationships 15% Expectations 15% Working environment 31% Personal motivation Cultural differences 35% Then, in order to verify our four hypotheses, we have matched data and made two entries graphs. We studied critical questions while making a distinction between types. The online personality test enables us to know the type of the polled expatriates. Among them, we count three ISTJ, two ENFJ, two ENTJ, one ESTJ and one ISTJ (see table 17). [...]

[...] Firstly, one can note that 100% of polled expatriates are Judging, and none of them are Perceiving. They are more responsible, well-organized, and act more carefully. Nevertheless, they miss some flexibility and capacity of improvisation, they stick more to tradition and are less reactive (but perhaps more pro-active). Then, they are more Thinking than Feeling This was unexpected. Indeed, T-types act more independently, they demonstrate critical thinking and do not search for personal relationships. On the contrary, F-types show compassion and personally involve in deep relationships with locals. [...]

[...] Consequently, extroversion influences expatriate performance. But this criterion has to be adapted to the host culture in order to be valuable and effective. Neuroticism It measures the tendency of an individual to have a temperamental nature and express disagreeable emotions such as anger, nervousness, sadness, susceptibility, etc. It measures the degree of negative emotional stability. But more generally, it concerns those who react emotionally to situation that should not affect people normally. For example, an expatriate could lose his / her temper while failing to face a problem. [...]

[...] Personal satisfaction On the other hand, expatriate performance is wider. It is as much a question of professional performance as a feeling of personal satisfaction (personal adjustment to local environment, acceptation by local nationals, creation of good work relationships, family adaptation and satisfaction, etc.). In fact, it seems to be a triangle where the 3 corners ensure equilibrium: Do the assignment for the company Blossom, in the personal area Live in a happy and united family Personal satisfaction is often neglected by companies, as long as expatriates perform well and reach the objectives. [...]

[...] In a sense, it represents the personality of the society. All people inside a same culture share a collective programming of the mind. But it is unconscious: one becomes conscious of one's own culture in meeting its opposite. According to Bernard Fernandez (2001), almost 40% of expatriates have problems of adaptation when local culture is different and leave their job before the end of the contract. The highest rates of failure correspond to developing countries or destination with high cultural distance. [...]