The journey of self-initiated expatriation
Description
The purpose of the current study is to investigate the relationships among cultural intelligence (CQ), perceived insider status, perceived organizational support (POS), overseas work adjustment, and in-role performance via a sequential mediation hypothesis and moderated sequential mediation hypothesis. SEM was applied for data analysis and latent moderated structural equation (LMS) was used for moderated mediation analysis. The conditional mediating effects at various levels of POS were also plotted using the Johnson-Neyman technique. The results indicated that perceived insider status and overseas work adjustment sequentially mediated the relationship between CQ and in-role performance. In addition, the conditional indirect mediating effect was significant only when self-initiated expatriates perceived higher POS. Keywords: cultural intelligence; perceived insider status; perceived organizational support; overseas work adjustment; in-role performance; self-initiated expatriates ================= hypotheses H1: CQ is positively related to perceived insider status. H2: Perceived insider status is positively related to overseas work adjustment. H3: The positive relationship between CQ and work performance is sequentially mediated by perceived insider status and work adjustment (sequential mediation hypothesis). H4: The indirect relationship between CQ and overseas work adjustment via perceived insider status is moderated by perceived organizational support, such that the indirect relationship becomes stronger as perceived organizational support increases (moderated mediation hypothesis).